Chapter 7 Conclusions

This initial Brazil-Europe operational ANS performance comparison report completes the first phase of the joint DECEA Performance Section and EUROCONTROL PRU collaboration project.

The project aims at the development of a joint and common understanding of agreed metrics and definitions to compare, understand, and improve air navigation service (ANS) performance. Based on the availability of associated data and priorities of both groups, this report uses a subset of the KPIs coordinated by ICAO under the on-going update of the ICAO GANP. The comparison shows similarities and differences in the observed performance in both regions. Based on this, several ideas for future research have been identified to further develop and complement the performance framework.

This report focusses on time period 2016 through 2019, i.e. pre-pandemic years. It is complemented by a COVID Briefing on air traffic developments during 2020 and the first part of 2021. This split supports to remove the influence of the unprecedented constraints on air transportation on operational performance measures during the COVID pandemic. Both reports are made available online representing a first implementation of a rolling bi-regional ANS performance monitoring activity. It is planned to regularly update the COVID Briefing.

The first part of this report examined commonalities and differences in terms of air traffic management and performance influencing factors, such as air traffic demand and fleet composition. These factors can have a large influence on the observed performance. Overall, air navigation service provision is more fragmented in Europe with local/national ANSPs and their respective control units. The integrated civil/military service provision is inherent to the organisation of DECEA and the Brazilian system. Irrespective of the airspace volume, the large difference in numbers of control units in Europe and Brazil demonstrates this. Both systems operate a central flow management center to ensure network wide flow management processes and functions.

In terms of air traffic and its growth, Brazil has observed lower demand following the economic crisis in 2015. However, the peak day traffic and throughput at the studied airports remained constant over the 2016-2019 horizon. Traffic and capacity levels for the busiest Brazilian airports were similar to the traffic levels observed at the lower end of the top-10 airports in Europe. In that respect, performance and challenges within both regions are comparable. Additional diversity in terms of air traffic was observed across the Brazilian airports as there was a significant share of light types serviced. Within the European context, the share of light types was mostly negligible. A higher share of wide-body (Heavy) aircraft operated from the European airports including a higher level of international connectivity. This is more nuanced in Brazil.

Within the KPA Predictability, European airports seemed to have a more even dispersion of early/late flight occurrences. Although the departure punctuality was somewhat better distributed at Brazilian airports, arrival punctuality still showed great variations due to manual controls. Thus, this aspect is potentially suitable for future improvements, and studies within the present collaboration. In addition, capacity comparisons showed some contrasts between the two regions. While Brazil recently improved overall airports declared capacity, European airports remained at similar levels during 2016 - 2019. However, although some Brazilian airports operate with high declared capacity values, comparable to European counterparts, these, on average, handled more significant arrival and departure peaks.

Operational efficiency in this report is measured for the taxi-in and taxi-out phase, and additional time in terminal airspace. Similar patterns were observed at the different airports in both regions. Generally, an average additional taxi-in time of less than 2 minutes per arrival marks higher performance. In this report, congested airports ranged above 3 minutes per arrival or higher. Within Brazil, taxi-in performance increased over the last years for most of the airports. Abstracting smaller variations, the taxi-in performance in Europe was widely constant for most airports. Lower levels of performance were observed at Rome (LIRF) and London Heathrow (EGLL). This suggests that changes to the local traffic levels and operational procedures have an impact on the surface movement management.

Regarding the chosen study airports, the taxi-out performance was more varied in Brazil than in Europe. A threshold of 4 minutes per departure was determined for the majority of airports and the observed taxi-out performance in Europe. Amsterdam Schiphol emerged as a best-in-class with an observed taxi-out performance ranging around 3 minutes per departure. This level was achieved by several airports in Brazil. Taxi-out performance improved in general over the last years at most Brazilian airports and were linked to the wider implementation of surface movement enhancement programmes.

This initial report will be updated throughout the coming years under the umbrella of the DECEA-EUROCONTROL memorandum of cooperation. As mentioned above the idea is to establish a web-based rolling monitoring updated on a regular basis. Future editions will also enable to complement data time series and support the development of further use-case analyses. The lessons learnt of this joint project will also be coordinated with the multi-national PBWG and ICAO GANP Study sub-group concerned with the further development of the GANP KPIs.