“We need to address these challenges within the ATM industry along with making sure that all stakeholders also play their part – this is not something that can be solved by ATM alone,” he continues. “On behalf of our European members, CANSO calls for regulation that prioritises long-term investment in airspace capacity over short and medium-term cost savings.”
Regulations
Network Manager
Weather and planning
ANSPs are also expected to achieve optimal results while keeping unit costs for airlines as low as possible. For the past two decades, total ANSP charges have remained stable even as traffic demand soared. Lauener says skyguide has limited revenue opportunities and most money is spent on maintenance. That leaves little cash to invest in new technologies, systems and ATCOs.
A more balanced performance and charging scheme is required than is the case with Reference Period 4 (RP4) – the targets in place for 2025-2029. “We need to prepare for the future,” says Lauener. “skyguide does not generate a lot of income but we have high complexity and this isn’t factored in. RP5 should respect individual situations but also acknowledge that we can’t work in silos.”
All operational chiefs agree that states must allow ANSPs to work together for the good of the overall system. “EUROCONTROL Network Manager helps a lot and all individual ANSPs are doing great work, but we do need the correct support from authorities,” says Enaire’s Benavent.
Collaboration at the network level is already happening and solutions that should mitigate many of the issues are already in place or being discussed in preparation for summer 2025.
Steven Moore, Head of ATM Network Operations Division, at EUROCONTROL Network Manager, says there are structural issues that are difficult to resolve but even marginal gains can add up to make a big difference.
The focus for summer 2025 will be “thinkNetwork” and centre on five key priorities:
Delivering agreed capacity
Adverse weather management
Realistic schedules
Prioritising the first rotation
Disciplined flight plan execution in the vertical and departure time elements
Delivering agreed capacity has been made easier, says Moore, as ANSPs will have most of the data they need to plan for summer 2025 a few months ahead of the usual timeline. Last-minute flexibility can be helped by improved forecasting into rostering, more flexible approaches to capacity constraints and, ideally, more ATCOs.
And though adverse weather will doubtless have an impact, “in 2025, we will have meteorological experts working in Network Manager Operations Centre at the heart of the network, so they can talk with their counterparts at individual ANSPs,” says Moore. “This expert collaboration will improve the network approach during the planning and execution phases of forecasted bad weather and help the network enter and come out of capacity more efficiently while maintaining safety.”
Realistic airline schedules speaks for itself while Moore believes prioritising the first rotation should perhaps be thought of as prioritising the first full rotation of an airframe – which includes the return leg. “In summer 2024, even when the first movement of the first airframe of the day left on time, approximately 60 per cent of the return legs were leaving later than planned, for a variety of reasons.”
As for failing to fly as filed, this causes considerable headaches for ATCOs. Last summer, close to 600,000 instances were recorded where flights weren’t in vertical compliance with that part of the flight plan, sometimes unavoidably, often not. For ANSPs, these unplanned entries can affect safety through over-delivery in the number of aircraft and lead to lost slots in the sectors where the aircraft were meant to be. In addition, late updated departure times give a false picture of demand in the sectors downstream of the departure and make it near impossible for ANSPs to optimise operations.
“ATCOs and pilots do have a part to play in this as well,” says Moore. “Hard as it is, ATCOs have to tell pilots that they must fly according to the filed flight plan unless there are safety reasons. Efficiency and sustainability are best served by sticking to the flight plan.”
“Summer 2025 won’t be easy with the forecasted 5 per cent traffic growth but, whatever happens, we know it would be worse without the great work and collaboration of the ANSPs,” he adds. “If we align as a network, if we “thinkNetwork”, then we can make the improvements at the network level that will help to alleviate delays without compromising safety.”
Simon Hocquard, CANSO’s Director General, concludes that “capacity, or more accurately the ability to meet demand, has once again returned to the top of the list of priorities for ANSPs and returned more quickly than many had expected.
More extreme weather conditions are also playing an increasing role. Of the 16.9 million minutes of delay, 47 per cent were weather-related. And there were approximately 30 per cent more bad weather days in 2024 than 2023. As happened last summer, there is little the network can do when the entire southeast region of Europe turns red.
Adrian Florea, Director of Operations at Romanian ANSP, Romatsa, says that, under such circumstances, safety is always the top priority, even if that means reducing capacity. “If it becomes necessary to shift traffic flows, then sectors become oversaturated. And it is hard to change airspace configuration quickly. So, weather just increases volatility when what ANSPs really need is predictability.”
Predictability particularly suffers when there are problems with the first rotation. “All stakeholders need time to recover if a morning flight is delayed,” Florea notes. “Once that first delay happens everything is out of sync. At some small airports, we have several flights scheduled to leave the same time. It’s obvious that can’t happen and so the last flight to leave is already delayed.”
In fact, in the worst scenarios one minute of delay at the first rotation equates to about nine minutes of delay by the end of the day. So, a 10-minute delay in the morning could mean an aircraft is 90 minutes out of position by the end of day, potentially leading to a missed curfew and causing problems for the following day.
Limited airport capacity is exacerbating the situation. skyguide’s Lauener says Zurich is a good example of an airport that has grown organically and has an extremely complex operation with little space.
This complexity leads to environmental trade-offs. ANSPs are committed to reducing CO2 emissions and noise but must also deal with an increasing number of flights. At the same time, night curfews are getting longer at many airports and separation standards and safety protocols must be obeyed.
“We all want sustainable solutions,” says Lauener. “But we need to simplify what we are doing and tackle noise in certain phases and CO2 in certain phases. It is not always possible to optimise every aspect of every phase of flight.”
There were a number of contributory factors, including adverse weather conditions, regulatory constraints, and unplanned reductions in available capacity, caused by technical or industrial issues or non-adherence to the vertical parts of the flight plan. The profound impact of the war in Ukraine cannot be underestimated either. It has reduced available airspace in Europe by some 20 per cent and forced many flights into already busy corridors.
But it was extraordinary growth in traffic that underpinned the delays. For about one-third of Area Control Centres (ACC), demand exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts. Urs Lauener, Chief Operations Officer, skyguide, says their traffic was 15 per cent up on 2023. In some parts of Spain, the increase was as high as 25 per cent.
“There is not enough time for ANSPs to adjust staff or airspace when demand grows suddenly,” says Xavier Benavent Navarro, Chief Operations Officer, ENAIRE – the Spanish ANSP. “We cannot react in real time. We are training air traffic controllers (ATCOs) as fast as possible and there are new ATCOs at the Seville and Barcelona ACCs. But across the industry, we know that we need more skilled staff, and we can’t achieve that in a few months.”
The staffing issue was compounded by other matters beyond ANSP control. Spain’s labour laws, for example, allow workers, including ATCOs, to take a free day without warning. An ATCO trained in a specific, complex sector, could therefore be unexpectedly absent.
The 2024 European summer was another challenging period for air navigation service providers (ANSPs). In the core summer months of June to August, there were 16.9 million minutes of Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) delay, according to EUROCONTROL.
“We need to address these challenges within the ATM industry along with making sure that all stakeholders also play their part – this is not something that can be solved by ATM alone,” he continues. “On behalf of our European members, CANSO calls for regulation that prioritises long-term investment in airspace capacity over short and medium-term cost savings.”
ANSPs are also expected to achieve optimal results while keeping unit costs for airlines as low as possible. For the past two decades, total ANSP charges have remained stable even as traffic demand soared. Lauener says skyguide has limited revenue opportunities and most money is spent on maintenance. That leaves little cash to invest in new technologies, systems and ATCOs.
A more balanced performance and charging scheme is required than is the case with Reference Period 4 (RP4) – the targets in place for 2025-2029. “We need to prepare for the future,” says Lauener. “skyguide does not generate a lot of income but we have high complexity and this isn’t factored in. RP5 should respect individual situations but also acknowledge that we can’t work in silos.”
All operational chiefs agree that states must allow ANSPs to work together for the good of the overall system. “EUROCONTROL Network Manager helps a lot and all individual ANSPs are doing great work, but we do need the correct support from authorities,” says Enaire’s Benavent.
Collaboration at the network level is already happening and solutions that should mitigate many of the issues are already in place or being discussed in preparation for summer 2025.
Steven Moore, Head of ATM Network Operations Division, at EUROCONTROL Network Manager, says there are structural issues that are difficult to resolve but even marginal gains can add up to make a big difference.
The focus for summer 2025 will be “thinkNetwork” and centre on five key priorities:
Delivering agreed capacity
Adverse weather management
Realistic schedules
Prioritising the first rotation
Disciplined flight plan execution in the vertical and departure time elements
Delivering agreed capacity has been made easier, says Moore, as ANSPs will have most of the data they need to plan for summer 2025 a few months ahead of the usual timeline. Last-minute flexibility can be helped by improved forecasting into rostering, more flexible approaches to capacity constraints and, ideally, more ATCOs.
And though adverse weather will doubtless have an impact, “in 2025, we will have meteorological experts working in Network Manager Operations Centre at the heart of the network, so they can talk with their counterparts at individual ANSPs,” says Moore. “This expert collaboration will improve the network approach during the planning and execution phases of forecasted bad weather and help the network enter and come out of capacity more efficiently while maintaining safety.”
Realistic airline schedules speaks for itself while Moore believes prioritising the first rotation should perhaps be thought of as prioritising the first full rotation of an airframe – which includes the return leg. “In summer 2024, even when the first movement of the first airframe of the day left on time, approximately 60 per cent of the return legs were leaving later than planned, for a variety of reasons.”
As for failing to fly as filed, this causes considerable headaches for ATCOs. Last summer, close to 600,000 instances were recorded where flights weren’t in vertical compliance with that part of the flight plan, sometimes unavoidably, often not. For ANSPs, these unplanned entries can affect safety through over-delivery in the number of aircraft and lead to lost slots in the sectors where the aircraft were meant to be. In addition, late updated departure times give a false picture of demand in the sectors downstream of the departure and make it near impossible for ANSPs to optimise operations.
“ATCOs and pilots do have a part to play in this as well,” says Moore. “Hard as it is, ATCOs have to tell pilots that they must fly according to the filed flight plan unless there are safety reasons. Efficiency and sustainability are best served by sticking to the flight plan.”
“Summer 2025 won’t be easy with the forecasted 5 per cent traffic growth but, whatever happens, we know it would be worse without the great work and collaboration of the ANSPs,” he adds. “If we align as a network, if we “thinkNetwork”, then we can make the improvements at the network level that will help to alleviate delays without compromising safety.”
Simon Hocquard, CANSO’s Director General, concludes that “capacity, or more accurately the ability to meet demand, has once again returned to the top of the list of priorities for ANSPs and returned more quickly than many had expected.
More extreme weather conditions are also playing an increasing role. Of the 16.9 million minutes of delay, 47 per cent were weather-related. And there were approximately 30 per cent more bad weather days in 2024 than 2023. As happened last summer, there is little the network can do when the entire southeast region of Europe turns red.
Adrian Florea, Director of Operations at Romanian ANSP, Romatsa, says that, under such circumstances, safety is always the top priority, even if that means reducing capacity. “If it becomes necessary to shift traffic flows, then sectors become oversaturated. And it is hard to change airspace configuration quickly. So, weather just increases volatility when what ANSPs really need is predictability.”
Predictability particularly suffers when there are problems with the first rotation. “All stakeholders need time to recover if a morning flight is delayed,” Florea notes. “Once that first delay happens everything is out of sync. At some small airports, we have several flights scheduled to leave the same time. It’s obvious that can’t happen and so the last flight to leave is already delayed.”
In fact, in the worst scenarios one minute of delay at the first rotation equates to about nine minutes of delay by the end of the day. So, a 10-minute delay in the morning could mean an aircraft is 90 minutes out of position by the end of day, potentially leading to a missed curfew and causing problems for the following day.
Limited airport capacity is exacerbating the situation. skyguide’s Lauener says Zurich is a good example of an airport that has grown organically and has an extremely complex operation with little space.
This complexity leads to environmental trade-offs. ANSPs are committed to reducing CO2 emissions and noise but must also deal with an increasing number of flights. At the same time, night curfews are getting longer at many airports and separation standards and safety protocols must be obeyed.
“We all want sustainable solutions,” says Lauener. “But we need to simplify what we are doing and tackle noise in certain phases and CO2 in certain phases. It is not always possible to optimise every aspect of every phase of flight.”
Regulations
Network Manager
Weather and planning
There were a number of contributory factors, including adverse weather conditions, regulatory constraints, and unplanned reductions in available capacity, caused by technical or industrial issues or non-adherence to the vertical parts of the flight plan. The profound impact of the war in Ukraine cannot be underestimated either. It has reduced available airspace in Europe by some 20 per cent and forced many flights into already busy corridors.
But it was extraordinary growth in traffic that underpinned the delays. For about one-third of Area Control Centres (ACC), demand exceeded even the most optimistic forecasts. Urs Lauener, Chief Operations Officer, skyguide, says their traffic was 15 per cent up on 2023. In some parts of Spain, the increase was as high as 25 per cent.
“There is not enough time for ANSPs to adjust staff or airspace when demand grows suddenly,” says Xavier Benavent Navarro, Chief Operations Officer, ENAIRE – the Spanish ANSP. “We cannot react in real time. We are training air traffic controllers (ATCOs) as fast as possible and there are new ATCOs at the Seville and Barcelona ACCs. But across the industry, we know that we need more skilled staff, and we can’t achieve that in a few months.”
The staffing issue was compounded by other matters beyond ANSP control. Spain’s labour laws, for example, allow workers, including ATCOs, to take a free day without warning. An ATCO trained in a specific, complex sector, could therefore be unexpectedly absent.
The 2024 European summer was another challenging period for air navigation service providers (ANSPs). In the core summer months of June to August, there were 16.9 million minutes of Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) delay, according to EUROCONTROL.