Air Navigation Services (ANS), the state-run company responsible for flight control in the Prague region, says 2005 air traffic was up 8 percent over the previous year's and Czech Airlines reached an all-time record of 5.2 million passengers.

Central Europe has reached what the industry terms an imminent capacity crunch, despite intensified efforts to hire staff, upgrade traffic control software and increase regional coordination.

Authorities insist that flying is still safe, but point out that such a boom in flights is bound to tax local navigation systems designed for far less traffic.

"A navigation system has to be properly sized in order to reach flight and cost efficiency," says industry development expert Jan Klas. "This is not the case in any state in Central Europe."

New software allows controllers to handle more traffic, says Lucia Pasquini, spokeswoman for Eurocontrol, the European organization charged with ensuring safe air navigation. But in the Czech Republic, the greatest need is for staff, say controllers. Things have only slightly improved since reports surfaced in May of overworked operators at Ruzyně Airport, for whom it's standard to work 250 hours of overtime annually.

Despite an additional 44,856 flights in 2005 — and the opening of the new North 2 terminal intended to boost Ruzyně's annual capacity from 6 million travelers to 11 million — ANS has been able to increase its staff by only 11 since May, to a total of 178. An additional 38 are in training and 17 more begin training in April, but that process can take up to two years.

At peak traffic times, Eurocontrol has taken to rerouting aircraft across airspace outside the Czech Republic, says George Paulson, director of air traffic management for the agency. In 2005, that amounted to about 20 flights, or 1 percent, according to ANS.

"Nothing has changed since May," says Zdeněk Sršeň, former president of the Czech Traffic Controllers Association. Neither will the new IATCC Prague traffic control facility, opening in February 2007, improve matters much, he adds. "We will still need more controllers."

Klas estimates that by 2007 the eight Central European states could see staffing levels 100 controllers short. Even so, he says, safety will not be compromised.

Travelers have yet to be much bothered, if the experience of one frequent flyer is an indication. "I know that traffic has been increasing," says Michael Gold of Herold brewery, "but I never felt unsafe flying in and out of Prague. In fact, I had the feeling there were less delays than ever in the last six months."

Richard Klíma, a spokesman for ANS, blames the traffic crunch on "the fragmentation of the European skies." Traditionally, air traffic management has been organized along national lines. But a German air traffic controller trained in that country's air traffic management system cannot simply be transferred to Prague.

Klas agrees: "We need more cross-border use of resources. Otherwise it will be impossible to solve this capacity problem."

Eurocontrol predicts further annual growth of 6.6 percent in Czech air traffic in 2006. Europe-wide, flight traffic is expected to double by 2020 to as many as 16 million flights a year, carrying over 1.5 billion passengers.

"We need to begin working now to build a pan-European network of air traffic, airports, airlines and airspace users, whose evolution is designed to meet future traffic loads," said Victor Aguado, director general of Eurocontrol at a London conference Jan. 18.

The Single European Sky program, a European Commission directive in the works since 2004, is also expected to eventually create a unified air traffic control system for upper airspace, defined as that above 28,500 feet (8,700 meters). The plan involves the mutual cooperation of European ANS providers, hopefully reducing the cost of navigation.