Airport Congestion Likely for EU VLJs

The latest Eurocontrol traffic projections suggest that capacity constraints for the anticipated growing numbers of very light jets (VLJs) will be at airports rather than in the sky. Alex Hendriks, principal advisor to Eurocontrol’s air traffic management director, said that by 2030 Europe’s existing airports could have a capacity shortfall equivalent to around 6,500 flights per day and that as many as 50 percent of all flights could face delays as a consequence. New-generation VLJs can avoid this squeeze, he argued, by using performance-based navigation tools to start flying to small airports with inadequate ground-based navigation infrastructure.