FABEC presents it's first FAB performance results

In 2012, the service quality provided by the seven FABEC air navigation service providers ANA (Luxembourg), Belgocontrol (Belgium), DFS (Germany), DSNA (France), LVNL (Netherlands), MUAC (EUROCONTROL), and skyguide (Switzerland) was satisfactory. This is in a nutshell the message derived from the first performance report published today by the FABEC ANSPs. In light of the changed demand from the airlines, the figures provided show that, in 2012, safety remained at a high level, punctuality improved substantially and overall horizontal flight efficiency reached very good scores. In parallel, progress was made in all key performance areas defined in the FABEC Performance Plan. Despite this positive result, the FABEC ANSPs are worried about the stagnating demand from the airspace users and its consequences on the financing of air navigation services.

Maurice Georges, Chairman of the FABEC CEO Board stated: “This first report on performance shows the commitment of all FABEC ANSPs to the Single European Sky. In fact, it is a sign that FABEC is starting operations. We are quite happy about the message conveyed by these operational results. However, in light of the stagnating traffic we have to be very careful when planning the coming reference period.

Klaus-Dieter Scheurle, CEO of DFS and responsible for financial aspects in FABEC, underpinned: “The current regulatory framework, which is mainly based on the principle of determined unit cost, traffic-risk sharing and long-term traffic forecasts jeopardises the sustainability of our business. For reference period 1 we are 7 percent below the planned traffic, which means that the FABEC ANSPs will have to compensate an expected loss of income of about EUR 226 million for the period from 2012 to 2014 alone. This mechanism, that endangers the reliability of the system, has to be changed as it shall be used on gaining cost efficiency for the regulated asset base.”