Bringing together two of Europe’s leading aviation associations, the European Regions Airline Association (ERA) is seeking to work even more closely with the Airports Council International (ACI) Europe to address the issue of European airport congestion.

Meeting at the ERA Regional Airline Conference in Malta, ERA Director General Mike Ambrose and ACI EUROPE Director General Olivier Jankovec agreed that cooperation is needed to lobby European regulators and European Union member states to take action against the airport congestion problem severely threatening the future of European aviation.

Mike Ambrose says: “Much attention has been focused on relieving and avoiding congestion in the skies, and rightly so, but we must not forget that without equivalent capacity on the ground, any progress we make in the air is severely compromised, if not wasted entirely.”

Olivier Jankovec adds: “The European Union can and must do much more to put the aviation industry in a condition to secure its licence to grow. This necessarily involves a policy which reconciles aviation growth with ambitious environmental objectives.”