EUROCONTROL issues its ATM Cost-Effectiveness Report for 2010

The ACE 2010 Benchmarking Report – ACE stands for ATM Cost-Effectiveness – commissioned by the Performance Review Commission (PRC) is available now on EUROCONTROL’s website.

This report, the tenth in a series launched in 2001, reviews the cost-effectiveness of Europe’s air traffic management (ATM) system, comparing the performance of 37 air navigation service providers (ANSPs).

ACE 2010 presents information on performance indicators relating to cost-effectiveness and productivity for the year 2010, showing how they changed over time (2006-2010).

It also analyses forward-looking information covering the 2011-2015 period based on information provided by ANSPs in November 2011.

This report focuses on assessing the ANS industry’s degree of reactivity after the traffic downturn in 2009, which affected the aviation community with unprecedented severity.

“On a European system level, traffic rose by +2.1% in 2010. This is a modest recovery compared with the -6.7% traffic decrease recorded in 2009. The ACE 2010 data analysis shows that the various cost containment measures initiated by the States/ANSPs in 2009 generated substantial savings – amounting to some €800M at European system level – compared with previous years’ plans.

“The ACE 2010 Benchmarking Report clearly indicates that there was a lag of one year before the cost containment measures generated substantial savings for the airspace users. In fact, these measures helped significantly in reducing total European ANS system costs in 2010, something which did not happen in the last decade,” observed Xavier Fron, Head of the Performance Review Unit.

The ACE Report also indicates that after having decreased by -6.8% in 2010, the European system unit costs are expected to reduce by -2.1% per annum until 2015.

For the years 2012-2014, the SES Performance Scheme’s first reference period (RP1), the unit costs’ profile is in line with the States’ revised Performance Plans, submitted at the end of 2011.

The cumulative capital expenditures planned for 2011-2015 amount to some €5.7 billion (i.e. over €1.0 billion per annum), demonstrating that ANSPs have planned substantial investment programmes for the next few years.

Keld Ludvigsen, the PRC’s Chairman, concluded: “It will be important to monitor the impact of these capital expenditures on ANSPs future cost-bases and to understand both how these investments relate to the European ATM Master Plan and how they fit in with the different FAB (Functional Airspace Block) initiatives.”

• Download the ACE Report
• Performance Review Commission website