Economic Airspace Evaluation

Project information

• Client: FABEC (Functional Airspace Block European Central) 
• Cooperation with Metroeconomia and University of the Basque Country
• Duration: 5 years (2019-2023)

Background

An increasing number of flight movements poses remarkable challenges to current and future air traffic management. The provision of air navigation services in Europe has gained increasing attention recently, both from an academic side as well as from policy decision makers. Many potential factors have been addressed to be a cause of inefficiency, such as fragmentation, traffic volatility or the financing of the infrastructure. However, academic and operational experts often follow different approaches, leading to different definitions, metrics, results and subsequent measures aiming to enhance efficiency in European airspace. The project is intended to support FABEC performance experts with economic and econometric expertise.

Research Areas

Fragmentation

Due to the ‘historical’ development of Air Traffic Control, currently 38 independent Air
Navigation Service Providers are covering the European Airspace, coordinated by
EUROCONTROL. This ‘fragmentation’ is often considered to be one major reason for
perceived inefficiencies of the current system. The aims of the module are:

• Identify and address performance gaps within FABEC
• Calculate the impact of fragmentation in Europe onto ATM system performance
• Determining the economic and operational benefits/inefficiencies of harmonization 
• Deduce a roadmap for improvements.

Financing of Infrastructure

According to several publications and somehow also the public feeling, the performance
of the US ATM System is seen to supersede the European system. In general, European and US-American airspaces are determined by fundamental economical and operational heterogeneities. As an example, the provision of Air Navigation Services in the US is mainly financed by taxes and runs centralized under the umbrella of the FAA, in Europe by route charges and decentralized bymore or less each member state. The analysis cover regulative measures and alternative prizing methods, such as peak load prizing. New prizing approaches will be discussed in the context of future ATM concepts, such as “sector-less ATM” or “dynamic sectorization”.

Macroeconomic Weight

The aim is to develop a methodology to calculate the macroeconomic weight and impact of Air Traffic Management, covering national as well as global perspectives. Effects on direct and indirect markets will be analyzed. Furthermore, the analysis will show how economic losses can be reduced in case of severe disruptions of the system as experienced in the past (e.g., a volcanic ash scenario).

Volatility

A main challenge in terms of Air Navigation Service (ANS) provision is planning and forecasting under uncertainties, such as volatile traffic movements and flows, thus influencing resource planning and allocation. The impact of volatility on efficiency is neither investigated by academic studies nor included in official EUROCONTROL benchmarking reports yet. Subsequently, volatility of air traffic is not considered in policy decision making so far. The aim is to implement of a Level of Service concept, considering pan-European heterogeneities in ANS provision and traffic demand characteristics.

Forecast Quality

Current air traffic forecasts predict an annual growth in flight movements of up to 2.7
percent. However, uncertainties with regards to actual traffic figures and flows remain as
always, implying significant challenges for air traffic management and air navigation services.Traffic Forecasts of STATFOR/Eurocontrol are often not accurate enough for capacity planning purposes. The range provided is large. Long term forecasts for 2050 assume average annual traffic growth between 0.3 and 2.7%. In the minimum scenario, this means a forecast of 10.5 million flights, while the maximum scenario predicts 26.1 million. The long-term forecasts thus indicate an uncertainty of +15 million flight movements. The aim is to find a measurement for accuracy of forecasts and a reliable range (interval of confidence).

Publications

• Thomas Standfuss (2020): Volatility in European ATM - How to measure seasonal fluctuations on different operation levels and their influence on performance, FABEC, Langen
• Thomas Standfuss (2020): Complexity Metrics in ANSP Benchmarking – Applicability and potential improvements of the PRU Metric, FABEC, Langen
• Thomas Standfuss, Vilma Deltuvaite, Matthias Whittome and Frank Fichert (2020): Performance Target Setting for Air Traffic Management - Opportunities and Limitations of an Academic Assessment in a Complex Industry, FABEC Research Workshop Interdependencies within ATM Performance in the context of a dynamic environment, Rome
• Thomas Standfuss, Vilma Deltuvaite, Matthias Whittome and Frank Fichert (2020): Performance Target Setting for Air Traffic Management - Opportunities and Limitations of an Academic Assessment in a Complex Industry, FABEC Research Workshop Interdependencies within ATM Performance in the context of a dynamic environment, Rome
• Thomas Standfuss, Matthias Whittome, Itziar Ruiz-Gauna, and Franz Knabe (2019): Volatility in Air Traffic Management – How changes in traffic patterns affect efficiency in service provision, 6th ENRI International Workshop on ATM/CNS, Tokyo
• Thomas Standfuss, Frank Fichert, Michael Schultz, and Petros Stratis (2019): Efficiency losses through Fragmentation? Scale effects in European ANS Provision, Competition and Regulation in Network Industries, Volume 20, Issue 4
• Thomas Standfuss and Matthias Whittome (2019): Forecast Quality of STATFOR Predictions, FABEC, Langen
• Thomas Standfuss and Matthias Whittome (2019): Operational and Financial Heterogeneities -  how they influence ATM Performance, FABEC, Langen