It is currently divided into 650 units administered from 60 air traffic control centers in 27 nations.

Faced with congested skies, airport delays and growing carbon emissions from aircraft, the European Union will this week seek to overhaul its aviation management system in a move that could save €2 billion to €3 billion in fuel costs and cut carbon dioxide output by up to 16 million tons a year.

With air traffic likely to double by 2020, the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, says it believes that changes to Europe's complex and unwieldy air traffic control structure are vital if the bloc is to manage the growth in aviation and keep to its ambitious climate change targets.

The plan for a "single European sky" proposes a big shake-up of air traffic control in Europe, which is currently divided into 650 units administered from 60 air traffic control centers in the 27 nations. By contrast the United States manages double the number of flights for a similar cost from 20 control centers, according to the commission.

Under the proposals, scheduled to be released Wednesday, European countries would agree to accelerate the creation of a network of larger air traffic control units, made up of adjacent nations, known as functional airspace blocks, probably by 2012.

Documents seen by the International Herald Tribune argue that flight paths for journeys between different EU countries are 15 percent less efficient than for domestic routes. On average aircraft fly 49 kilometers, or 30 miles, longer than necessary because of the way airspace is controlled. Cutting these routes could eliminate nearly five million tons of carbon emissions a year. Together with better management of airport operations to reduce delays on the ground, emissions could be reduced by 7 percent to 12 percent on average, equivalent to 16 million tons of carbon dioxide each year, the commission said.

The overhaul is likely to be used by the airline industry to show that steps can be taken to clean up the skies without subjecting jets to what it calls cumbersome European carbon regulations designed to curb emissions.

Previous efforts to change the system have proved controversial because of the sensitivity of pooling control of airspace, which is an issue close to questions of sovereignty. But EU diplomats say they believe that the combination of rising fuel prices, growing concern over climate change and projected increases in air traffic make the proposals timely.

The single sky initiative has been welcomed by Lufthansa, which says that each day inefficiencies cause it to waste enough kerosene to fuel 11 wide-bodied jets flying from Frankfurt to New York.

"A single European sky is something Lufthansa has been asking for for some time now," Aage Dünhaupt, the airline's head of public communications for Europe, said Sunday. "It is much more important than an emissions trading system because it will reduce immediately emissions and fuel consumption."

Duenhaupt said that in the United States the cost of air traffic control for each flight is $380 compared with $667 in Europe.

Some airlines are lobbying against EU moves to make them part of the region's emissions trading system, calling it an ineffective regional attempt to tackle a problem that requires a global solution. Airline lobbyists also warn that the Europeans risk a trade war with the United States if they insist on moving ahead without an international agreement.

The documents to be released this week illustrate how much time and fuel are wasted by poor management of airspace. On each of the 3,920 flights between Zurich and Düsseldorf in 2007, planes flew an average of 182 more kilometers than necessary, making the journey 54.6 percent longer than needed, burning an additional 465 kilograms, or 1,025 pounds, of fuel and emitting an extra 1,466 kilograms of carbon dioxide per flight.

The package of measures to be put forward by the European transport commissioner, Antonio Tajani, will lay down binding performance targets for air navigation service providers.

It will also propose measures to help convergence between national air traffic networks, setting a target date for countries to work with neighboring nations in creating air traffic networks.

"The relative absence of fragmentation is one major element helping to make the U.S. air traffic management system twice as efficient as that of the EU; it manages the double number of flights for a similar cost from some 20 control centers," the document said.

The commission argues that improved air traffic management can cut emissions by 10 percent per flight. Assuming an average fuel consumption of 2.9 liters per 100 kilometers and per passenger for the new generation of Airbus jets, this reduction will amount to savings of 1.5 liters of fuel per passenger and 5 million tons of carbon dioxide, the document said.

Planners should also work on arrival times of aircraft rather than departure times thereby reducing the amount of time aircraft are held at airports, the commission said.

This month Britain and Ireland announced the creation of an air traffic network, whose management board is chaired by NATS, the British air navigation services provider, and the Irish Aviation Authority.

"Over 90 percent of the air traffic on the North Atlantic flies over the U.K. and Ireland, and this joint approach will enable us to enhance the safety and efficiency of the airspace management system to the benefit of the airline industry and passengers," Rosie Winterton, Britain's minister of state for transport, said this month. "By working together to design and manage airspace, we will reduce the amount of fuel that planes use, resulting in improved environmental performance."

In the EU, 28,000 flights are flown each day by 4,700 commercial planes using 130 airports. Despite rising fuel costs, air traffic grew by 5.3 percent in 2007 in the bloc over all and by 12 percent in the new member states.

IHT