The Spanish air navigation operator ENAIRE has just approved the new Environmental Sustainability Strategy within the scope of its Flight Plan 2025 program. With these initiatives, it will seek to contribute to the development of more sustainable aviation.
ENAIRE currently offers flight control and en-route overflight services through five centers located in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Gran Canaria, and Palma, as well as the approximations to all the airports in Spain. Through the 2025 Flight Plan, it aims to promote the sustainability of operations by improving air traffic management.
The Green Sky Environmental Sustainability Strategy contains three initiatives:
- Fly Clean, which seeks to reduce CO2 emissions from the efficiency of flights operating in Spanish airspace.
“The horizontal efficiency of flights will reduce the distances and times of air routes and the taxiing of aircraft at airports. To this end, the route network will be optimized through civil-military coordination, which will make possible a more flexible use of the airspace reserved for the Defense needs, as well as the implementation of the “free route” which will enable direct point-to-point flights within our airspace”, ENAIRE assures.
According to the agency’s estimates, the most direct routes will reduce some 9.8 million kilometers flown between 2021 and 2025, which would represent a saving of 58,500 tons of fuel and the possibility of avoiding the emission of 185,000 tons of CO2 into the environment.
- Fly Quiet, on the other hand, will seek to reduce the noise pollution that impacts on the population and biodiversity. For that purpose, ENAIRE informed that “it will work on the design of more efficient routes based on satellite technology (PBN) which allows avoiding the overflying of populations, as well as a systematic analysis of the possible acoustic impact of each aerial maneuvering project”.
- 1will be the initiative applied directly by the agency, to reduce the emissions of its own facilities through the use of renewable energies, more efficient vehicles, among others.
Through Green Sky, ENAIRE is committed to the long-term sustainability of the airline industry, introducing enhancements and modernizations that will make it possible to increase the efficiency of operations.
In accordance with data published by the national air navigation manager, the air transport industry generates ” significant social and economic benefits by connecting society, being an important generator of employment and supporting global, European and national economic development (…) The air transport sector accounts in Spain for 1.8 million jobs, 109 billion euros of the Gross Domestic Product and moves 275 million passengers (source ATAG 2020 with data from 2019)”.
