Executive Summary - Covid Briefing

This COVID-19 Briefing complements the initial operational comparison of air navigation system performance in Brazil and Europe jointly developed by the Brazilian Department of Airspace Control (DECEA) Performance Section and the EUROCONTROL Performance Review Unit (PRU). The comparison report covers the years 2016 through 2019 and focuses on the identification of similarities and difference between the 2 regional systems in terms of operational performance. An inclusion of the period 2020 through early 2021 would have distorted the trends and patterns identified.

This targeted briefing focusses on the air traffic development in both regions during the COVID pandemic. It provides an overview of the regional air traffic demand and addresses the impact of the varying air transport policies and government responses to air travel in Brazil and across Europe. Based on the initial comparison report, this briefing analyses demand on the regional network and local airport level. The local level represents the top-10 airports in each region

This briefing identifies a set of take-aways:

  • the network and local airport level demand profile in Brazil and Europe differs significantly;
  • Brazil has observed a continual recovery and increase in air traffic throughout 2020;
  • the European pattern is characterised by an initial recovery thorughout the summer months of 2020 and a succeeding decline as governments had to react to the increase in infections following the initial relaxation of travel constraints;
  • Brazil is experiencing a similar wave of higher infections following the holiday season with a sharp drop in early 2021;
  • traffic reduction at the Brazilian study airports is on average smaller than in Europe - this is primarily driven by the predominant national oriented traffic patterns in Brazil with only a small number of airports serving a discernible share of international traffic; *this pattern is reversed in Europe with a traditionally high level of pan-regional and international air traffic.

Both reports are available online at https://ansperformance.eu/global/brazil/. This COVID Briefing and the associated online report will be updated on a regular basis establishing a first implementation of a rolling bi-regional ANS performance monitoring activity.