IFATCA Policy is:

In the operation, maintenance and development of the ATM system when balancing the requirements of safety, efficiency and the environment, the level of safety shall always be maintained or improved.

In case environmentally driven procedures are introduced in the ATM System, these shall be introduced taking into consideration the increased complexity for the controller. This complexity shall be managed at the appropriate, strategic, level. A trade-off between environment and capacity shall be considered as part of this management of complexity, as safety is paramount.

Individual environmental aspects shall be considered by an ATM environmental management system and documented in an ATM environment case as part of an overall performance case.

Provisions for an ATM environment management system should comprise at least the following requirements:

• Ensure that the level of safety shall be maintained or improved when environmentally-driven procedures are introduced;
• Ensure that all individual environmental factors are identified and considered while establishing procedures;
• The actual values (noise levels, fuel consumption and the amount of emissions) of the various individual environmental contributors of new or existing procedures should be established in detail for transparency reasons;
• The interrelation of the various individual environmental factors should be identified and addressed.

Provisions for an environment case should comprise at least the following requirements:

• An environment case is a documented body of evidence that provides argument that a certain procedure is optimized for all individual environmental factors as prioritized by the appropriate authorities;
• An environment case should provide a detailed overview to the appropriate authorities for the determination of priorities of the individual environmental factors on a strategic level.