EMMA KELLY / LONDON

Industry panel calls for further study as European system is found to be half as cost effective as US counterpart

Eurocontrol's Performance Review Commission (PRC) is calling for further study of the European air traffic management (ATM) system. This follows its own investigation which "raises questions about the productivity" of the continent's ATM.

Europe's ATM system is only half as cost-effective as its US counterpart, although the US Federal Aviation Administration handles at least twice the amount of traffic as Europe's air navigation service providers, according to the PRC, a panel of senior independent industry experts established in 1998 to advise Eurocontrol member states on improving the continent's ATM.

The PRC conducted the study "as a spur to European institutions to improve efficiency and productivity", it says. Although there are similarities between US and European ATM systems, with both suffering from increasing delays (on average in 2000 26% of all departures in Europe and the USA incurred a 15min-plus delay), there are significant differences.

Instrument flight rules (IFR) and visual flight rules traffic in the USA is two times and 3.5 times higher than in Europe, respectively, with the USA handling 641 million passenger departures in 1999, compared with 450 million for the 30 Eurocontrol member states. In addition, the most congested parts of Europe are in the central area, while the most crowded area of the USA is the eastern seaboard. Military airspace in Europe is spread throughout the region, while in the USA it is near borders. Europe has a range of legacy air traffic control systems, whereas the USA benefits from economies of scale allowing fewer area control centres (ACCs).

A major difference concerns fragmentation of Europe's ATM system into 26 subsystems comprising 58 ACCs - three times the number found in the USA for a similar size of controlled airspace. There are 47 civil and military en route air navigation service providers in Europe compared to one in the USA.

The PRC identifies major performance differences between the two in terms of cost-effectiveness and efficiency-productivity. Air navigation services (ANS) costs per flight are €667 ($586) in Europe compared with €380 in the USA, and total ANS costs per 1,000km (540nm) flown are €838 in the Eurocontrol area but €492 in the USA. A breakdown of cost-effectiveness shows that total ANS costs per total air traffic control officers (ATCO) in the Eurocontrol region is €320,000 and €342,500 in the USA; en route ATCOs per sector working positions are 17.9 in Europe and 9.8 in the USA; while IFR kilometres flown per sector working positions are 14.1 million in Europe and 15.9 million in the USA.

Potential contributors to the performance gap include operational differences, such as traffic complexity; organisational/institutional issues, including fragmentation of the European ATM system, non-optimal airspace design and civil/ military arrangements; ANS management issues, including too many staff employed in low traffic periods and too few in busy periods; and capacity-demand management issues, says the PRC.

Source: Flight International