Europe is tightly integrated in many areas, but air traffic control is not one of them. Each country administers its own airspace: 47 air navigation service providers and 22 control centres manage Europe's 10.5 million square kilometres of airspace. This stands in stark contrast to the United States, where one air navigation service provider and one control centre handles an equally large block of airspace (9.8 million square kilometres). The European air traffic control system thus has 75 percent higher costs, but 45 percent lower performance than its US counterpart. 

Europe's airspace is much more heavily segmented than the US. This not only increases costs, but produces higher emissions.

The largest climate protection project
The Single European Sky is the largest climate protection project in European aviation. It would reduce CO2 emissions by up to 10 million metric tonnes every year – almost three times as much CO2 as the entire SWISS fleet emits in an entire year. We already have the tools. SWISS continues to push for the project to be implemented, but it is out of the airlines' hands. This is where politicians need to take action!
That said, the civil and military aviation authorities in Switzerland along with Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have made the first promising step in the right direction. In November 2008, they signed an agreement to create the joint Functional Airspace Block Europe Central (FABEC).

Eliminating onerous restrictions
The approach restrictions for Zurich Airport over Southern German territory also impact the environment. Changing the approach route increases fuel consumption by some 200 kilograms per approach – translating into an annual increase of 3,000 metric tonnes of fuel consumption and 9,200 metric tonnes of CO2 emissions. The aircraft also emit an extra 47 metric tonnes of NOx as well. SWISS is seeking to remedy this situation by advocating better operating conditions at Zurich Airport.