Asian air traffic could be heading for ‘catastrophic gridlock’, aviation experts warned, urging the region’s countries to co-operate more. Air passenger traffic in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow by 5.7 per cent a year between 2013 and 2017, compared with 3.9 per cent annually in Europe and 3.6 per cent in North America, the International Air Transport Association was quoted as saying. “The situation right now is barely tolerable in some pockets of the region,” said Hsin Chen Chung, head of the Air Traffic Management Research Institute at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Countries should work together to deal with the increasing demand for international and domestic air travel in the region, he was quoted as saying. With Asian states unwilling to share information about their air traffic capabilities, Hsin predicts than an open-sky policy such as the one in Europe will not be feasible. But the region should strive to set up common procedures and better technology for air traffic control, he said. The Air Traffic Management Research Institute was jointly set up by NTU and the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore last November to look into the management of the region’s air capacity.
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