The European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) is asking the European Commission to provide the additional necessary regulatory and financial tools to help national and regional authorities in the EU to implement performance-based navigation (PBN). “In particular, the Commission should focus on providing guidance to national authorities and facilitating access to funding for SMEs to ensure the implementation of these projects,” EBAA secretary-general Athar Husain Kahn said at the trade body’s event Boosting Regional Opportunities and Connectivity in Brussels on Tuesday.
“Without help, a small operator or a regional airport in a remote part of eastern Europe might not know what to do or carry out the required investments,” he told AIN. The adoption of the PBN implementing rule is an important first step, he said, while insisting that, for this progress to become tangible, the Commission needs to step up its financial and practical support.
The compulsory rollout of PBN and extending the deployment of EGNOS-based procedures will unlock many secondary and tertiary airports for business aviation users, according to Jyrki Paajanen, the policy officer of aviation safety at the Commission’s directorate-general for mobility. “Hopefully, we’ll have an explosion of [all-weather accessible] runways,” he said. The PNB rule is implemented in phases, with a first phase ending December 2020.