Aerial Emergence: Crisis Management and The Sustainability of European Airspace

Abstract

Purpose

The chapter explores the sustainability of European aeromobility and the socio-technical systems that enable it by examining how certain threats, risk and uncertainties are managed in European airspace.

Methodology/approach

The chapter examines the discussions around the inception and deployment of methods of ‘crisis management’ to airspace governance and focuses on the importation of particular systems of knowledge, practices and technologies from other contexts.

Findings

The chapter finds that European authorities have installed a combination of capacities involving central and decentralised coordination and decision making – as well as training and simulation – in order to better anticipate and respond to moments of crisis, although the politics of such an arrangement is not unproblematic to the interests of state sovereignty and the airlines’ suspicion of regulation or lack thereof.

Originality/value

The chapter is one of the first to make explicit how ash-cloud crises and disruption to airspace are being governed post the more immediate consequences of the 2010 ash cloud.

Citation

Adey, P. (2013), "Aerial Emergence: Crisis Management and The Sustainability of European Airspace", Sustainable Aviation Futures (Transport and Sustainability, Vol. 4), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 199-215. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2044-9941(2013)0000004009