In fact, in 2020, ANSPs reported union-wide costs which would be 1% lower than 2019 and there is a reason for this. The EUROCONTROL data snapshot clearly states that since 2008 (actually earlier according to our data analysis) the actual costs of the Air Traffic Management have become disconnected from traffic figures.
The graph below, taken from the Snapshot, shows this quite clearly. If we consider that the index of 100 represents both the Cost and the Traffic in 1998, then the two indexes rose proportionally until 2004 (Cost= 126,85 and Traffic= 128,02) but then the increase of the traffic has been (with two notable exceptions in 2009 and 2012, both years of financial crisis) at least the double or more than that of cost increases.
![No Emergency Plans: ATCEUC releases a Snapshot on Air Traffic Management in Europe 1 Travel Tourism News | Domestic & International 111 | eTurboNews | eTN](https://eturbonews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/111-1024x598.jpg)
In order to provide a safe and continuous ATS service supplying the Airspace Users with the requested capacity, an ANSP in its role of essential infrastructure (as it is considered by ICAO) needs to maintain these overall costs especially those incurred for staff and infrastructure.
Data provided by EUROCONTROL shows that between 1998 and 2009, those costs grew by 36% while traffic went up by 52% and from 2009 to 2019 they remained almost steady while the traffic continued to increase by another 29%.
This shows that there isn’t a direct link between the traffic figures and the total cost of the ATS service and that any possible gains in efficiency have already been exhausted.
This is evident by the next graphic which we have produced from data extrapolated from the EUROCONTROL snapshot showing the year-to-year variation of traffic and costs and the relationship among the two indexes (Efficiency gain). The red arrow shows the “disconnection” point between the two, in 2006:
![No Emergency Plans: ATCEUC releases a Snapshot on Air Traffic Management in Europe 2 Travel Tourism News | Domestic & International 2222 | eTurboNews | eTN](https://eturbonews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/2222-1024x574.jpg)
Since then, the European Commission together with all stakeholders have established mechanisms such as the “traffic risk sharing mechanism” which have almost set to zero the possibility for an ANSP to observe any economic surplus and the gap between the traffic increase and the cost increase has widely risen
The previously mentioned exceptional measures, set up for the 3rd Reference Period (RP3) with Regulation IR 2020/1627, have frozen the ANSPs’ financial situation with the loss of revenues due to traffic drop. In this period ATS services have been regularly provided to the few flights crossing the European sky who have had a pivotal role in maintaining the connectivity among the States allowing the safe movement of people, goods, medical equipment and everything required to successfully fight the first wave of pandemic. To cover the incurred costs of the period, EUROCONTROL even granted a loan to the ANSPs who needed it.
Those exceptional measures introduced in November ensured to have:
– The incentive schemes shall cover only 2022 to 2024 (Article 3);
– 2020 and 2021 are considered as a single value for the determined unit cost (Article 4-5);
– The adjustments will be spread equally over 5 to maximum 7 calendar years (Article 5),
while leaving on the States and the relative ANSPs the responsibility to provide the safe continuous ATS services to Airspace users.
The incentive schemes, intended to incentivize the ANSPs to overperform in terms of capacity and sustainability, are described in Regulation 2019/317, article 11. A pivot value is defined at a FAB level. A dead-band is defined as a symmetrical range around the pivot value. The maximum bonus and penalty is set at 0,5% of determined costs at ANSP level. The scope of incentives is limited to cover only CRSTMP1en-route ATFM delay causes. In case of a bonus at FAB level, only those ANSPs that have performed better than expected (i.e. pivot value beyond the dead-band) are awarded a bonus. And the same goes with penalties on the other way.
![No Emergency Plans: ATCEUC releases a Snapshot on Air Traffic Management in Europe 3 Travel Tourism News | Domestic & International 4444 | eTurboNews | eTN](https://eturbonews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/4444-1024x435.jpg)
![No Emergency Plans: ATCEUC releases a Snapshot on Air Traffic Management in Europe 4 Travel Tourism News | Domestic & International 555 | eTurboNews | eTN](https://eturbonews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/555-1024x412.jpg)
Regarding the traffic risk sharing mechanism, intended to reduce the risk of revenue changes caused by differences in the actual service unit produced from those forecasted in the performance plan (Regulation 2019/317, article 27), till now it has been used mainly to reduce the actual unit rate since the traffic handled by the ANSP has been higher than the STATFOR forecasts used to establish the Unit-Rate most of the time.
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