Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Norway initialled the contents of a treaty establishing the North European Functional Airspace Block (NEFAB) on Friday 9 December 2011.
The establishment of the NEFAB is based on the EU regulation on the Single European Sky that requires EU Member States to establish functional airspace blocks by 4 December 2012. With airspace blocks, the European Commission wishes to make European air navigation services more efficient and improve the capacity of the Single European Sky.
The common functional airspace block improves the efficiency of airspace use for example by enabling more direct routes, improved route availability and coordination. Benefits also include shorter flight times and delays and savings through decreased fuel consumption.
The initialled state level treaty is a framework agreement. Based on the treaty, authorities (Trafi in Finland) and service providers (Finavia in Finland) draw up more detailed agreements on the cooperation in the use of the airspace.
The treaty will be sent to the European Commission and other Member States for evaluation. The treaty is planned to be signed in the spring of 2012. The cooperation agreements between authorities and service providers will also be signed in the near future.
