Innovative air traffic management technologies will contribute to a step-change in safety and efficiency with rapidly increasing demand, to achieve improved punctuality, to reduce time spent in travel-related procedures at airports and to achieve resilience in the air transport system.

An applicant who has previously passed one or both of the examinations in visual flight rules (VFR) and instrument flight rules (IFR) communications shall not be re-examined in the relevant sections.

4. Where a Member State or an air navigation service provider has ordered or signed a binding contract to that effect or developed a flight message transfer protocol for the systems referred to in Article 1(2)(a) and (b) before the date of entry into force of this Regulation so that the compliance with the requirements of point 6 of Annex I cannot be guaranteed, the air navigation service provider or the controlling military unit may use other versions of the Internet protocol for peer-to-peer communications between their systems until 31 December 2014.

In the field of education, the gross enrolment rate in secondary schools increased to 89% in 2004 and matriculation pass rates improved from 49.3% in 1998 to 73.3% in 2003 and 70.7% in 2004.

Since 1990, the number of seats available on scheduled non-stop flights between the EU and China has increased from 250,000 to nearly 3 million in 2003 (+1150%).[2] The growth in available seats on scheduled non-stop flights to Japan, which is still the EU’s largest air traffic market in Asia, “only” grew by 378% over the same period.

The development of our airports in fact passes through significant increases in our income, something that can only be achieved by welcoming new activities on their site, such as charter flights, freight transport, business flights and excellent customer service (...) It must be noted that the basic equipment is far from sufficient for meeting the requirements linked to development of new activities (...). As for Gosselies, although it has suitable buildings and sufficient parking areas for the present, the limited length of its runway will be a disadvantage in terms of the types of activity that it can accommodate".