The U.S. and the European Union announced a "green skies" agreement Monday (June 18) designed to accelerate implementation of transatlantic air traffic management upgrades. Major European and U.S. aircraft makers and airlines have signed on to the program.

According to information from Ecuador, the country's Civil Aviation Authority will decide tomorrow if  two air traffic controllers will face punishment due to their involvement in a near miss last April (see here for more).
Ecuador's controllers are asking the CAA's committee to consider all the evidence regarding the incident prior to reaching a decision. In case the two controllers are dismissed, they will appeal.
More information and photos are expected.

Users of the U.S. aviation system are battling over a plan to change the way that air traffic control is paid for. The fight pitches the airlines, on one side, against business and general public fliers on the other.

Hi everyone,
I am a university student from Zürich, Switzerland. I am writing a thesis on the topic of "flight efficiency". The focus is on enroute efficiency. Does anyone know of interesting papers or books that could contribute to this thesis?
I am also looking for papers telling about changes/ improvements in various parts of the world, as examples. My resources are limited to Europe so far, so anyone who can contribute anything along the topic of flight efficiency from other parts of the world, please help me out!

A CHUNK of asphalt lifted and smashed into a plane carrying 149 passengers on a runway, a report revealed yesterday.
The Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) report said the incident could have forced the Boeing 737 off the runway at Aberdeen Airport.

A big part of the problem is that the U.S. air traffic control system is based on ground-based radar technology that is increasingly incapable of handling the growing volume of traffic — particularly in bad weather.
But new navigation, communication and display technologies being installed in the flight decks of today's airliners and business aircraft are helping solve the problem. These technologies help pilots fly their aircraft more efficiently and safely and help controllers keep flights on time.

FLYING over the roof of the world can be tricky. The mountainous Tibetan terrain is hazardous and the weather uncertain. There might be no radar coverage. But the GPS receivers on the Air China 757 fix the position of the aircraft to within a few metres as it begins its descent through a long valley, around an awkward ridge and down onto the new runway at Linzhi.

The sky above Europe is in a particular mess. The EU has long been trying to unite a fragmented system that is still largely organised around national boundaries. Where America has a single provider of air-traffic control services, Europe has a mind-boggling 34. IATA says the resulting delays and longer routings cost airlines €3.3 billion a year.

The main elements of the American ATC system date from its inception in the 1950s. It is organised around one-way “lanes” in the sky along which aircraft fly under radar control while communicating with air-traffic controllers. They navigate over fixed radio beacons on the ground. Many of these are in the same places where beacon fires were lit to guide the 1920s mail flights that pioneered commercial aviation.

The president of government-owned Brazilian Airport Infra-structure Company (Infraero) blamed air traffic controllers for the crisis that has brought chaos to Brazil's airports since 2006.