The year 2014 marks 100 years since the outbreak of the First World War - an almost unimaginable tragedy, but also a critical turning point in social, political and industrial change. Today's aviation technology and scope would probably be very different without the century's upheavals. European ATM today has to deal with broken-up empires and countries. Franz Joseph's empire, for example, is now all or major parts of Austria, Hungary Croatia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Ukraine, etc. Thus, while Europe has 39 states with ANSPs, most having one en-route centre, there are 64 in total. The standard comparison is with the Continental USA, covering about the same geographical area. It has one ANSP and 20 en-route centres, and handles about two-thirds more IFR traffic. These disparities were one of the major factors in the creation of the Single European Sky (SES) programme.
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