PRR 2019 presents an assessment of the performance of Air Navigation Services (ANS) in the EUROCONTROL area for the calendar year 2019.The actual financial data relate to 2018, which is the latest year for which actual financial data are available.
Traffic
Air traffic in the EUROCONTROL area continued the positive trend observed over the past five years in 2019. Air traffic grew by 0.8% compared to 2018, yet at a notably lower growth rate compared to previous years. Compared to 2013 when the positive trend started, the ANS system controlled an additional 1.5 million flights (+15.4%) in 2019.
As in previous years, average aircraft size (+1.7% vs. 2018) and distance (+1.7% vs. 2018) continued to grow at a higher rate than flights in 2019 which consequently resulted also in a higher en-route service unit growth in 2019 (+2.8% vs. 2018).
Similarly, passenger numbers continued to grow at a higher rate (+3.2% vs. 2018) than flights in 2019, yet also with a notable slowdown in the rate of growth.
There was however a clear slowdown in traffic growth particularly in the second half of 2019, influenced by the slowing economic growth in Europe; the collapse of Flybmi, Germania and Thomas Cook, and the grounding of the B737 MAX fleet.
The impact of the corona virus outbreak on the aviation industry remains to be seen but indications in early 2020 suggest a notable reduction in traffic as a reaction on the drop in demand.
A total of 32 of the 42 Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) included in the analysis reported a traffic increase in 2019. In absolute terms, ENAV (Italy), CroatiaControl, ENAIRE (Spain), HCAA (Greece), SMATSA (Serbia/ Montenegro), and Austro Control showed the highest year on year growth in 2019. Sakaeronavigatsia (Georgia), LFV (Sweden), Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC), Skeyes (Belgium), and ANS CR (Czech Republic) showed the highest decrease in absolute terms in 2019.
The traffic growth was to some extent affected by the traffic flow measures implemented by the Network Manager in summer 2019 (eNM/19) to mitigate the effects of the capacity shortfall in the core area. The eNM/19 measures aimed at offloading traffic from congested Area Control Centres (ACCs) such as Karlsruhe and Maastricht which resulted in more traffic in other ACCs.
The cooling economy in Europe and the uncertainties linked to the outbreak of the corona virus point towards a further slowdown in traffic growth or even a negative growth in 2020. Accordingly, the new STATFOR 7-year forecast published in February 2020 has been revised downward notably.
The slowdown in traffic growth, less adverse weather, and the preventive measures taken by all stakeholders to avoid the high delay levels observed in summer 2018 helped to improve overall service quality in 2019. After a continuous deterioration over the past years, arrival punctuality improved again from 75.7% in 2018 to 77.8% in 2019. At the same time, average departure delay in the EUROCONTROL area decreased in 2019 by 1.6 minutes per flight to 12.8 minutes.
Environment
Environment is an important political, economic and societal issue and the entire aviation industry has a responsibility to minimise its impact on the environment. The environmental impact of aviation on climate results from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and contrails, generated by aircraft engine exhaust.
Based on the figures of the European Environment Agency (EEA) aviation accounted for approximately 3.8% of total EU28 GHG emissions in 2017 (the latest year for which information is available). Although this share appears to be comparatively small, aviation is one of the fastest growing sources of GHG emissions in Europe. The relative share of aviation is expected to further increase as aviation activity based on fossil fuels is forecast to continue to grow while other industrial sectors (including road transport) increasingly decarbonise over time.
The challenge in reducing aviation emissions is well known. To reduce GHG emissions from aviation the plans are essentially based on four pillars: (1) Aircraft technology (airframes and engines), (2) Sustainable aviation fuels, (3) Economic measures, and (4) Improved infrastructure and operations (operational efficiency).
The Air Traffic Management (ATM)-related impact on climate is closely linked to operational performance (fuel efficiency) which is largely driven by inefficiencies in the flight trajectory and associated fuel burn (and emissions). ATM deploys a number of projects and initiatives aimed at improving operational efficiency, including performance based navigation (PBN), free route airspace (FRA), collaborative decision making (CDM), and continuous climb and descent operations (CCO/CDO). Additional efficiency gains are expected to come from the further digitalisation and automation of the industry which will enable the better use of data-driven technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The current best estimate is that ATM can influence approximately 6% of the total gate-to-gate fuel burn (“benefit pool”). In this context it is important to highlight that the estimated inefficiencies are based on a comparison of actual flight trajectories to theoretical reference trajectories which, due to operational restriction, interdependencies, etc., cannot in practice be reached at system level.
Although the ANS contribution towards reducing CO2 emissions is with around 6% of the total emissions from aviation comparatively limited in relation to total European CO2 emissions (0.2% of total GHG emissions), there is still ample scope for further improvement. It goes without saying that the strong focus on improving flight efficiency needs to be maintained. However, considering the forecast traffic growth over the next 20 years the task for ATM will be challenging and the margins for improvement are likely to narrow as the ongoing improvement initiatives such as Free Route Airspace (FRA) are fully deployed.
Total economic assessment (en-route)
The total economic assessment reviews performance over time but also by combining cost-efficiency with service quality. The lower traffic levels following the economic crisis starting in 2008 reduced the pressure on capacity to some extent and provided a suitable environment to change the economic models for ANSPs in preparation of the start of the Single European Sky performance scheme (SES-PS) in 2012.
Total en-route ANS costs remained almost flat between 2008 and 2018, mainly due to cost containment measures implemented following the crisis in 2008 and the binding SES-PS cost-efficiency targets as of 2012.
At the same time, flights increased by +7.4% while en-route service units grew at a notably higher rate (+32.6% vs. 2008) due to a continuous increase in average flight length and aircraft weight. Air Traffic Controller (ATCO) productivity increased significantly over time and ANS unit costs decreased by -25% between 2008 and 2018. At the same time, ANSPs reduced ATCO recruitment most likely as a reaction on the traffic downturn in 2008 or as part of the cost containment measures.
With traffic continuing to grow again in 2013, also ATFM en-route delays increased first gradually and then soared in 2018 which suggests substantial shortcomings in proactive capacity planning and deployment. Despite an increase in ATCO recruitment between 2014 and 2018, which appears to be a reaction on the increasing traffic and delay levels since 2013, the number of trainees in 2018 was still 25% below the 2008 level.
The total economic review of en-route ANS performance combines the direct ANS provision costs and the estimated costs of en-route ATFM delay to airspace users. The analysis illustrates that the substantial increase in en-route ATFM delay and associated costs in 2018 and 2019 clearly outweigh the notable cost efficiency gains over the past years. This underlines the importance of finding a balanced approach in performance management which considers all key performance areas equally instead of focusing entirely on one area.
In a dynamic interconnected system such as the ATM network, the ability to adapt to changing conditions (flexibility/ scalability) and to mitigate effects of unexpected events (resilience) becomes more and more important. This will also help to better adjust the ATM network to economic and political turbulences, possible demand changes following the environmental debate, and not least the effect of the corona virus outbreak in December 2019 on aviation.
In today’s performance based environment it is important to ensure that cost-efficiency measures consider effective capacity planning and deployment to avoid exponential increases in delays and related costs to airspace users.
Safety
Due to data availability, this section can only be updated with preliminary 2019 data in April 2020 before the final version of the report is published.
Operations En-route
The review of operational en-route ANS performance in the EUROCONTROL area in 2019 evaluates ANS-related flight efficiency constraints on airspace users’ trajectories. It addresses several performance areas including ATFM delay, capacity, horizontal flight efficiency and vertical flight efficiency.
En-route capacity: Following the disproportional increase in 2018 and the subsequent major disruptions for passengers, en-route ATFM delays fell by 9.0% in 2019 to reach 17.2 million minutes; the second highest level since 2010.
The average en-route delay decreased from 1.74 to 1.57 minutes per flight in 2019: flights were delayed more frequently, albeit with shorter average delays than in 2018. The number of flights that were delayed by en-route ATFM regulations increased to 9.9% of all flights (+0.3 percentage points vs. 2018). Even though approximately one flight in six was subject to en-route ATFM regulations, only one flight in twenty five was delayed for more than 15 minutes. However, just those 4% of flights account for 70% of all en-route ATFM delays.
According to the ANSPs, ATC Capacity (43.9%) attributed delays remain the main portion of en-route ATFM delays, followed by ATC Staffing (24.3%), Weather attributed delays (21.2%), and ATC disruptions/industrial actions (7.2%).
The observed performance improvement in 2019 was mainly driven by less delays attributed to adverse weather (-24.1% vs 2018) and ATC disruptions/strike (-13.5% vs 2018). Delays attributed to ATC staffing decreased slightly over 2018 (-3.8%) while ATC Capacity attributed en-route ATFM delays increased further compared to 2018 (+6.6%).
Previous PRRs highlighted the inconsistent manner in which ANSPs attribute ATFM delays either according to the delay cause or according to the geographical location to where the delay is being assigned. The analysis showed that the share of ATC staffing related delay would increase from 24% to approximately 77% of all en-route ATFM delays which suggests that ATC staffing is much more of a problem, and therefore a possible solution to capacity constraints, than is currently being acknowledged by ANSPs.
In 2019, DFS (Germany) generated 25.9% of all en-route ATFM delays in the EUROCONTROL area, followed by DSNA (France) (22.9%), Austro Control (10.1%) and HungaroControl (8.3%).
The most delay generating ACCs in 2019 were Karlsruhe (17.7%), Marseille (11.7%), Vienna, Budapest, Langen, and Barcelona (4.4% respectively). Karlsruhe UAC, Marseille, Vienna and Budapest together generated half of all en-route ATFM delays in 2019.
In order to mitigate the effects of the serious capacity shortfall in the core area observed in summer 2018, the Network Manager, in cooperation with a number of ANSPs, implemented again flow measures (re-routing or level-capping ) in summer 2019 (eNM/19) to offload traffic from constrained ACCs.
The collaborative, network-centric approach avoided even higher en-route AFM delays in 2019 but at the cost of lower flight efficiency and additional CO2 emissions for a considerable number of flights. It is likely that the Network Manager will continue to have a role in coordinating similar mitigation exercises in the future, considering the existing capacity shortfalls in some locations and the current capacity plans of the ANSPs.
A review of the evolution of the declared capacity for the most constraining sectors during the period 2012 – 2019 highlights that several ANSPs have not been implementing capacity where it is most needed, indeed some sectors declare less capacity in 2019 than they were providing in 2012. In addition, the high number of collapsed sectors among the most constraining sectors reinforces that point that ATC staffing needs to be properly addressed.
En-route flight efficiency has a horizontal (distance) and vertical (altitude) component, both with a high relevance for fuel efficiency and the environment. Average horizontal en-route flight efficiency at EUROCONTROL level remained relatively constant over the past five years with a slight deterioration in 2019. The efficiency of actual trajectories decreased by 0.1 percentage points to 97.2% in 2019.
The significant gap between the efficiency of the filed flight plans (95.6%) and the actual flown trajectories (97.2%) remained also in 2019. In 2019, the actual trajectory is on average 1.6% more efficient than the filed flight plan and still 1.3% more efficient than the shortest constrained route. Or expressed differently if airspace users would have flown the filed flight plans they would have flown an additional 156 million kilometres in 2019.
The efficiency of the shortest constrained routes (95.9%) is only slightly more efficient than the filed ones which means that the inefficiencies are mainly due to the constraints imposed by the network.
En-route flight efficiency is comparatively low in the core area where traffic density is highest and where Free Route Airspace (FRA) is not yet implemented. The envisaged FRA implementation by 2022 and optimised cross border implementation is expected to be one of the main contributors towards improving flight efficiency, as airspace users will have more choices to optimise their flight plans.
Although FRA implementation will help to file more efficient trajectories to avoid segregated areas, it will not improve the information flows necessary to optimise the use of segregated airspace in Europe. As shown in previous analyses, there is further scope to improve the civil/military cooperation and coordination. Another important factor affecting horizontal en-route flight efficiency is the lack of capacity. Horizontal flight efficiency is worse in summer due to imposed ATFM constraints, resulting from capacity shortfalls. Days with high en-route ATFM delays tend to have notably lower flight efficiency.
The vertical component of en-route flight efficiency has been gaining more attention over the past years, not least because of the impact of measures implemented by the Network Manager to mitigate delays at network level during summer 2018 (4ACC) and 2019 (eNM/19). Although difficult to quantify at network level in terms of additional fuel burn and CO2 emissions, the analysis shows a considerably higher number of altitude constrained flights since spring 2018.
There are numerous initiatives aimed at improving flight efficiency underway but even with traffic growth slowing down, it appears to be challenging to meet the Master Plan ambitions within the given timeframes, considering the existing lack of capacity and the negative effect on flight efficiency in some parts of the core area.
Operations Airport
The average traffic growth at the top 30 European airports in 2019 was of 1.7%, the lowest increase since 2013. The growth is distributed unevenly among the top 30 airports, with 9 airports showing less traffic than the previous year.
The opening of Istanbul Grand airport in April 2019 was the biggest airport development in Europe in years consequently replacing Istanbul Atatürk in the list of the top 30, which otherwise remains unchanged.
The level of inefficiencies on both arrival and departure flows slightly increased in 2019. Overall, 6.1% of all arrivals at the top 30 airports in 2019 were delayed by arrival ATFM regulations, 0.3 percentage points more than in 2018. Average arrival ATFM delay increased from 1.09 to 1.14 minutes per arrival in 2019, with airports showing heterogeneous trends. The most important deterioration in terms of arrival ATFM delay was observed at Athens associated to ATC capacity problems, followed by Amsterdam that became the airport with the highest arrival ATFM delay per flight of the top 30 airports and is the biggest contributor to European airport ATFM delays.
The average [Average additional ASMA time] asma_add at the top 30 airports also increased from 2.07 to 2.17 minutes per arrival in 2019 with London airports, Heathrow and Gatwick, still showing the highest additional ASMA times (7 and 4.6 minutes per arrival respectively).
The average additional taxi-out times increased from 4.21 to 4.22 minutes per departure in 2019, where some significant variations at airport level are directly related to special circumstances. ATC pre-departure delays, where measurable, showed as well noteworthy increases at some airports.
Most important performance deteriorations observed in the different indicators are associated to specific events, mainly works on the runway systems or implementation of new systems or procedures. Mitigation measures and careful planning are to be considered to avoid this detrimental impact on performance.
Lisbon was the only airport that implemented A-CDM in 2019, but other projects like Advanced Towers allow airports to share departure information with the Network Manager (currently almost 45% of departures share DPIs with NM) which helps improve slot adherence and network predictability.
[Vertical flight efficiency during climb and descent] vfe_cdo at the top 30 airports has in general increased very slightly. The biggest increase of average time flown level during descent in 2019 with compared to 2018 was observed for flights arriving at Munich (MUC) and Milan (MXP), each having an increase of almost 1 minute per flight. Flights arriving at Frankfurt (FRA), Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG), London (LHR), London Gatwick (LGW) and Paris Orly (ORY) showed the highest inefficiencies with more than 5 minutes of level flight on average in 2019.
Economics
In 2018, the latest year for which actual financial data is available, en-route ANS cost per en-route service unit (TSU) at pan-European system level amounted to 47.8 €2018, which is -4.1% lower than in 2017. This performance improvement, recorded for the sixth year in a row, results from the fact that the growth in TSUs (+6.2%) more than compensated the increase in en-route ANS costs (+1.8%).
The outlook for 2019-2024, based on forecast cost and TSU figures, suggests that en-route unit costs are expected to further reduce by -0.4% per annum to reach 46.6 €2018 by the end of 2024. This remarkable en-route ANS cost-efficiency improvement at pan-European system level (-2.6% vs 2018) reflects the fact that TSUs are forecast to increase at a slightly higher rate (+2.9% p.a.) than en-route ANS costs (+2.5% p.a. or +1.2 B€2018 over the period). En-route ATFM delays grew rapidly over the last years to reach 17.2 million minutes in 2019, with a majority of this delay attributed to ATC capacity and staffing issues. In this context, it is expected that, if these forecasts materialise, the additional costs planned over the next years will contribute to alleviate the current capacity issues faced by ANSPs and ensure that adequate capacity levels are provided to meet future traffic demand. In the medium-term, measures such as adequate planning in terms of recruitment of ATCOs, the implementation of flexible operational working arrangements and the undertaking of relevant investment programmes (e.g. based on new technologies) could allow ANSPs to address the current capacity issues while at the same time managing their cost-efficiency performance. The PRC will monitor the evolution of this situation in future years by examining changes in total economic costs.
In 2018, the European terminal ANS unit costs amounted to 174.3 €2018 per terminal service unit (TNSU), which was -3.2% lower than in 2017. This performance improvement results from the significant growth in TNSUs (+4.7%), which compensated the increase in terminal ANS costs (+2.1%). The outlook for 2019-2024, based on a smaller sample of European terminal charging zones expected to report data during the RP3, suggests that the unit costs for terminal ANS are expected to remain mostly stable since the TNSUs are forecast to grow slightly faster (+2.2% p.a.) than terminal ANS costs (+2.1% p.a.).
Detailed benchmarking analysis of pan-European ANSPs indicates that, in 2018, gate-to-gate ATM/CNS provision costs increased by +2.1% over the preceding year and amounted to some €8.4 Billion at system level. At the same time traffic, expressed in [composite flight-hours] composite_hr, rose by +5.4%, which resulted in a reduction in gate-to-gate unit ATM/CNS provision costs (-3.1%).
An indicator of economic costs is also used to account for the quality of service provided by the ANSPs by combining the ATM/CNS provision costs and the estimated costs of en-route and airport ATFM delays. This analysis shows that, at pan-European system level, unit economic costs grew by +6.4% in 2018. As a result, the relative share of ATFM delay costs also increased and represented, on average, 24% of total economic costs for pan-European ANSPs, compared to some 16% in 2017.