skyguide (in full German: Schweizerische Aktiengesellschaft für zivile und militärische Flugsicherung, English Swiss Air Navigation Services Ltd.[1]) ) is the air navigation service provider which manages and monitors Swiss airspace. Skyguide is a joint-stock company under Swiss private law which is responsible, on behalf of the Swiss Confederation, for ensuring the safety of all Swiss airspace and of adjoining airspace areas in Germany, Austria, France and Italy that have been delegated to its control. For Swiss airspace, this duty extends to both civil and military air navigation services. Skyguide is subject to the supervisory authority of the Swiss Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). Its principal shareholder is the Swiss Confederation, which holds 99.91% of the company’s share capital.
In 2001, its name was changed from Swisscontrol to skyguide (officially lower case written). Skyguide is supervised by the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). The main shareholder, with 99.91 percent of the skyguide share capital is the Swiss Confederation, which is also represented on the board of directors. Around 1400 people work for skyguide, about two-thirds of them in the provision of air navigation services, a quarter in technical services and the rest mainly in administration. Since 1 October 2007, skyguide has been headed by Daniel Weder.
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Skyguide’s most important partners are the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Eurocontrol (European organisation for aviation safety) and the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO). Skyguide has had a subsidiary company in Belgium since the end of 2000 called Skynav, which serves as a link to the European Union.
Europe’s airspace is highly fragmented today. The Single European Sky (SES) project of the European Commission is intended to harmonise the continent’s air traffic management systems and, in doing so, enhance the efficiency of the overall airspace structure.
One prerequisite for doing so is the creation of a series of large integrated airspace blocks. Further efforts are being geared to tailoring airways more closely to users’ requirements, rather than basing them on national borders. Europe’s airspace needs this kind of reorganisation if it is to cope with the further traffic growth projected over the next few years. [2]
A total of nine new “functional airspace blocks” are to be created in Europe. Functional Airspace Block Europe Central (FABEC) is one of them. The new FABEC will be home to some 55% of all the air traffic handled in Europe, or around 5.3 million flights a year. The six FABEC member states (Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland) signed the corresponding international agreement in December 2010, laying the legal foundation for the new airspace entity.
Skyguide managed some 1.16 million instrument flight rules (IFR) flights through its airspace in 2010 – an average of around 3,200 flights a day – and generated total annual operating revenue of over 365 million Swiss francs. Switzerland’s air navigation service provider currently employs around 1,400 personnel spread over 14 locations throughout the country. Two-thirds of them are in air navigation services, around a quarter are in technical functions and most of the rest hold administrative positions. [3]
Skyguide’s main operating locations are its two operations centres, one next to Dübendorf Air Force Base in Wangen-Brüttisellen and the other near Geneva Airport. The latter is also home to the company’s administrative head office. The Wangen centre came into operation in February 2009. Skyguide maintains further operations at Bern (Belp), Buochs, Grenchen, Lugano (Agno) and St.Gallen-Altenrhein regional airports, and at numerous all-military or joint civil/military airfields. These include Alpnach, Dübendorf, Emmen, Locarno, Meiringen, Payerne and Sion. At Les Eplatures regional airport, the air traffic services have been delegated to the airport operator. In accordance with the regulations of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), all instrument flight rules (IFR) and visual flight rules (VFR) traffic in Switzerland is handled in English and French.
In 1922 the Swiss made an agreement with wireless telegraph. Marconi Radio AG, the Swiss subsidiary, opened on 23 February that year for the development of wireless telegraphy, after the First World War had demonstrated the significance of this kind of telecommunication. On 10 May 1928, the name of Marconi Radio AG was changed to Radio Schweiz AG (RSAG) to emphasise its Swiss national character. On 1 January 1931, the Confederation charged the RSAG with the provision of air navigation services in Switzerland.[4]
Until the end of the Second World War, RSAG was primarily engaged in serving the telegraphic communications needs of the Confederation. Only on 21 December 1948, after concluding an agreement with the Confederation under which the Confederation and the airports would bear the cost of air navigation services, did RSAG start to monitor the airspace.[4][5]
On 1 January 1988, RSAG’s air navigation activities were restructured and brought into the new nationalised company, Swisscontrol, whose headquarters is in Bern. Swisscontrol was converted into a public limited company in 1996 and the headquarters transferred from Bern to Meyrin.[4]
At the beginning of 2001, civil and military air navigation services, which had been separate until then, were united in a single company, called skyguide. Skyguide thus became the first air navigation services provider in Europe to control the whole of its country’s airspace.[4]
On 21 September 2005 skyguide became one of Europe’s first air navigation service providers to be certificated companywide to the ISO 9001:2000 norm. In achieving this, skyguide also met the requirement for Single European Sky (SES) certification, which was awarded by the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) about a year later. [4]
On 15 March 2006,[6] BAZL prevented the air navigation services provider skyguide from starting operations in the single control centre for Switzerland, its Upper Airspace Control Center Switzerland (UAC-CH) in Geneva. But the UAC-CH project nevertheless allowed the Geneva upper airspace to be progressiveley operating with 'stripless' environment since 2005. A detailed internal BAZL report was published on 3 April 2006, listing the serious omissions made by skyguide.
On 20 December 2006 the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) awarded skyguide the certification for the Single European Sky (SES).[4]
Taking into account the lessons-learned after UAC-CH, skyguide plans to extend a stripless harmonized environment over the whole Swiss ACC airspace by end of 2014.
This text is a translation from German (de:skyguide)
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