AENA Initiatives to Reduce ATM System Costs, Raise Airspace Efficiency

Aena is well aware of the situation generated by the economic crisis which is considerably affecting the air transport industry, and most outstandingly the airlines and hence the air navigation service providers, facing a strong decrease of our incomes.

As a reaction to the crisis and with the aim to mitigate its negative impact as much as possible, Aena has deployed various initiatives on which it has been working since late 2008. They are mainly focused on two axis: on the one hand, the reduction of our ATM system costs leading to a direct effect on the charges, and on the other hand, the efficiency of the routes over the Peninsula and Canary Islands which will result in lower operation costs for the user as well as a significant reduction of CO2 emissions.
With regards to the financial measures applied, Aena has implemented a strict budgetary restriction policy, and has announced the decision of freezing air navigation charges in 2010, despite the strong air traffic downturn currently taking place, which affects its income in a significant way. As already explained in various fora, in order to achieve this goal of freezing its air navigation charges, Aena has adopted a set of measures which imply significant economic efforts.

With regard to the en route charges, Aena has decided not to charge its clients with Eurocontrol costs. Moreover, the pending amount Aena expected to recover during 2010 from previous fiscal years has been postponed to future years, with the subsequent financial effort this entails.

Concerning terminal charges, it is worth highlighting that with the current unitary charges applied, Aena only recovers half of the costs incurred when providing these services.

Moreover, the budgetary constraints have lead to another set of global measures, such as limiting the hiring of new staff –albeit with the punctual exceptions of operational personnel-, the downward renegotiation of contracts with our suppliers or a restrictive policy with regards to travelling expenses. Investment plans are also being reviewed applying a set of prioritization criteria which ensure that the investments needed to maintain and improve the quality, efficiency and safety of the services we provide are not disregarded.

On the other hand, and as an essential issue to achieve greater efficiency in the provision of air navigation services, Aena is firmly committed with the negotiation of a new agreement with the ATC personnel which implies productivity improvements, reduction of the additional cost as well as more flexibility and dynamic adaptation to demand.

From the operational efficiency point of view Aena is jointly working with the Ministries of Public Works and Defense on the identification of various action plans with a first set of agreed measures impacting on the current air space structure and routes. Its implementation will translated to a decrease of the annual distance traveled by aircrafts of 1.2 million nautical miles, that will represent an annual saving of 11,5€M on operational costs as well as 27,500 tones of CO2 emissions reduction.

Another relevant initiative in the operational field is the support to Eurocontrol’s Flight Efficiency Plan (FEP), for the European region. This initiative entails for Aena the launch of a series of actions such as the adoption of measures for the optimization of the use of regional air space, the implementation of measures to enhance TMA efficiency and the strengthening of the cooperation with the neighboring air navigation service providers of Portugal and Morocco.

This type of anti-crisis initiatives are widespread at European level and in this sense Aena continues to jointly work with other air navigation service providers within the CANSO European Regional Office in the identification of both individual and joint measures for immediate implementation. The scheduled actions have already been gathered in the report distributed by CANSO dated 17th April 2009.

Aena hopes these initiatives and the specific action plans launched by Aena and other European partners are truly effective and allow us to reach the expected targets trying not only to relieve the crisis’ financial burden but also to act as an incentive to rise air traffic figures to ratios of positive growth again, as well as the sector’s results.

(c) Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Date posted: 4-Aug-09