Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Background

ICAO emphasises the importance of a performance-based approach and invites States, (sub-) regions and organisations to engage and participate in performance benchmarking activities. In 2016 interested stakeholders developed a set of key performance indicators used by a variety of organisations to establish a common set of indicators. This set of indicators is proposed as part of the ICAO Global Air Navigation Plan update cycle and the related Aviation System Block Upgrades. Stakeholders are encouraged to share their common understanding and lessons learnt from measuring air navigation system performance and providing input to the decision making process in terms of operational procedure changes and deployment of novel enabling technologies.

Brazil and Europe represented by DECEA and EUROCONTROL engaged in 2016 in a cooperation agreement. Amongst other activities, this agreement entails the collaboration in developing an initial operational performance benchmarking exercise for Air Navigation Services (ANS).

Based on this agreement, DECEA started a Working Group, which has become the ATM Performance Indicators Management Committee, aiming at improving performance-based management. Through lessons learnt from the best practices observed at EUROCONTROL, and in particular PRU, DECEA established the Performance Section.

DECEA Performance Section and the PRU have established a joint project to foster the common understanding and harmonised interpretation of the proposed ICAO GANP indicators. The technical work has been conducted throughout the recent years comprising joint workshops and a series of web-based discussion sessions and face-to-face meetings. It also comprised the identification and validation of comparable data sources and joint data processing and analysis to produce this report.

1.2 Scope

Comparisons and operational benchmarking activities require common definitions and joint understanding. Hence the work in this report draws from commonly accepted outputs of previous work from ICAO, the FAA, EUROCONTROL and CANSO. The key performance indicators (KPIs) used in this report are developed using procedures on best available data from both the DECEA Performance Section and PRU. The comparison described in this report does not address all eleven Key Performance Areas (KPA). From an indicator perspective, DECEA Performance Section and PRU agreed to focus on an operational benchmarking and to collaborate on the basis of the currently proposed performance indicators coordinated by ICAO in conjunction with the update of the Global Air Navigation Plan (GANP)(“Description of the Potential Performance Indicators in the GANP 2016” 2016). This initial report focuses on system characteristic measures, and the KPAs Capacity, Efficiency and Predictability.

1.2.1 Geographical Scope

The geographical scope of this report relates to Brazil and Europe.

Brazil is defined as the sovereign airspace of the national territory of Brazil. In Brazil, airspace control is performed in an integrated civil-military manner. Both the air defence and air traffic control functions are performed by the same institution: the Department of Airspace Control (DECEA). DECEA is a governmental organisation subordinated to the Office of Defence and to the Brazilian Air Force Command, coordinating and providing human resources, technical equipment for all air traffic units servicing the Brazilian territory, ensuring the safety of air traffic flow and, at the same time, military defence.

DECEA is the main body of the Brazilian Airspace Control System (SISCEAB). The department is in charge of providing the Air Navigation Services for the 22 million km² of airspace jurisdiction, including oceanic areas. More specifically, the Brazilian airspace is composed of 5 Flight Information Regions (FIR). Air traffic within these FIRs is managed by 4 operational bases subordinated to DECEA. These integrated Centres for Air Defence and Air Traffic Control (CINDACTA) cover the following areas (c.f. Fig. 1.1).

Figure 1.1: Brazilian Airspace Structure/FIRs (CINDACTAs)

The CINDACTAs combine civil air traffic control and air defence military operations. In addition to CINDACTAs, there is also the São Paulo Flight Protection Service (SRPV-SP), which is responsible for controlling the air traffic of the largest air flow density area in the country, in the terminal areas of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Figure 1.2: European Airspace and EUROCONTROL Member States

In this report, Europe, i.e. the European airspace, is defined as the area where the 41 EUROCONTROL member states provide air navigation services, excluding the oceanic areas and the Canary islands. In 2016, EUROCONTROL signed a comprehensive agreement with Israel and Morocco. Both comprehensive agreement States will be successively fully integrated into the working structures including performance monitoring. EUROCONTROL is an inter-governmental organization working towards a highly harmonized European air traffic management system. Air traffic services are provided by air navigation service providers entrusted by the different EUROCONTROL member states. Dependent on the local and national regimes, there is a mix of civil and military service providers, and integrated service provision. The Maastricht Upper Area Control Center is operated by EUROCONTROL on behalf of 4 States (Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany). It is the only multi-national cross-border air traffic unit in Europe at the time being. Given the European context and airspace structure, the European area comprises 37 ANSPs with 62 en-route centers and 16 stand-alone Approach Control Units (i.e. totalling 78 air traffic service units).

Europe employs a collaborative approach to manage and service airspace and air traffic. This includes the integration of military objectives and requirements which need to be fully coordinated within the ATM System. A variety of coordination cells/procedures exists between civil air traffic control centers and air defence units reflecting the local practices. Many EUROCONTROL member states are members of NATO and have their air defence centers / processes for civil-military coordination aligned under the integrated NATO air defence system.

Further details on the organisation of the regional air navigation systems in Brazil and Europe will be provided in Section 2.1.

As concerns airport-related air navigation performance, this initial comparison report addresses the performance at a set of airports. These airports represent the top-10 or most relevant airports in terms of IFR movements in both regions and allow to make meaningful comparisons. In Brazil, next to the traffic, the study airports have consolidated systems and structured processes for data collection. For the European context, the selected study airports comprise the busiest airports in different states exhibiting a mix of national, regional, and international air traffic. These airports are also characterised by varying operational constraints that make them excellent candidates for an international comparison. All of these airports are subject to the performance monitoring under the EUROCONTROL Performance Review System and provide movement related data on the basis of a harmonised data specification.

Figure 1.3: Study airports of Brazil/Europe Comparison

Fig. 1.3 provides an overview of both regions and the location of the chosen study airports within the regions. The airports are also listed in Table 1.1.

1.2.2 Temporal Scope

Based on the data availability and associated pre-processing, this initial report addresses the observed performance at Brazilian airports for the period of

• 2016 - 2019 for SBCT, SBKP, SBCF, SBPA, SBBR; and
• 2017 - 2019 for SBGR, SBGL, SBRJ, SBSP and SBSV.

For the European study airports the data has been available for all airports for the horizon 2016 - 2019.

Throughout the report summary statistics will be given with reference to calendar years of this comparison study.

1.3 Data Sources

The nature of the performance indicator requires the collection of data from different sources. DECEA Performance Section and PRU investigated the comparability of the data available in both regions, including the data pre-processes, data cleaning and aggregation, to ensure a harmonised set of data for performance comparison purposes.

DECEA mainly uses tower data from the main airports as a data source for performance studies. Each landing and take-off operation is collected and provided automatically by the control tower system, such as the times of operations, gate entry and exit, and flight origin and destination.

Within the European context, PRU has established a variety of performance-related data collection processes. For this report the main sources are the European Air Traffic Flow Management System complemented with airport operator data. The sources are combined to establish a flight-by-flight record. This ensures consistent data for arrivals and departures at the chosen study airports. The data is collected on a monthly basis and typically processed for the regular performance reporting under the EUROCONTROL Performance Review System and the Single European Sky Performance and Charging Scheme..³

1.4 Structure of the Report

This initial Brazil-Europe comparison report is organised as follows:

• Introduction overview, purpose and scope of the comparison report; short description of data sources used
• Air Navigation System Characteristics high-level description of the two regional systems, i.e. areas of responsibility, organisation of ANS, and high-level air navigation system characteristics
• Traffic Characterisation air traffic movements, peak day demand, and fleet composition observed at the study airports
• Predictability observed arrival and departure punctuality
• Capacity and Throughput assessment of the declared capacity at the study airports and the observed throughput, including runway system utilisation comparing achieved peak throughput to the declared capacity.
• Efficiency analysis of taxi-in, taxi-out, and terminal airspace operations.
• Conclusions summary of this report and associated conclusions; next steps.

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3. The indicators used throughout this report represent a variation of the indicators used within the European context. Thus, while the overall trend is ensured, the actual values in this report may differ slightly from the European performance monitoring (c.f. https://ansperformance.eu).↩︎