Positive 2013 results dampened by further stagnation of flights controlled – 2014 remains volatile

In 2013, the service quality provided by the seven FABEC air navigation services providers ANA (Luxembourg), Belgocontrol (Belgium), DFS (Germany), DSNA (France), LVNL (Netherlands), MUAC (EUROCONTROL), and skyguide (Switzerland) was high, partially the best ever recorded. The result achieved is accompanied by a slight decline of controlled flights observed in most of the ANSPs. This is in a nutshell the message derived from the performance report 2013 - Delivering Performance published today by the FABEC ANSPs. In light of the changed demand from the airlines, the figures provided in the report show that safety remained at a high level in 2013, punctuality improved to the best values ever measured and the 2014 targets for horizontal flight efficiency were achieved ahead of time. In parallel, progress was made in all key performance areas defined in the FABEC Performance Plan.

Somewhat contradictory signals can be seen in the first third of 2014. Although the overall number of controlled flights increased slightly by 0.8 percent, it can be noted that this development varies across the different control sectors and countries. The operational performance achieved by the FABEC air navigation service providers over the first 4 months of 2014 shows a slight deterioration as the year-to-date en-route ATFM delay per flight reached 0.30 min/flight compared to 0.23 min/flight in 2013. The reasons are mainly industrial actions, a shortage of ATC capacity and adverse weather.

Both the report 2013 – Delivering Performance and the Capacity Report April 2014 are available under www.fabec.eu.