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It explores new possibilities for determining route charges.
It is not supposed to provide proposals, nor recommendations.
Nevertheless, it devises some new ideas that seem to deserve further consideration.
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The Present Rules for Determining Route Charges |
Each single flight is charged according to:
- the length of the portion of route flown over each state;
- the unit rate of the over-flown states (different states have different unit rates);
- the aircraft size , actually, the Maximum Take-Off Weight –(MTOW).
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Unit rates for each state (except in UK) are determined in such a way that the total expected revenues cover the total expected costs for providing ATM services (Full Cost Recovery principle).
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Why new route charge rules? |
Because the present charging system, in most of European countries:
- does not consider the quality of the provided service (good service and bad service are charged the same);
- does not provide incentives to reduce costs nor to improve performance;
- does not contemplate any form of benefit or cost sharing: if traffic decreases, unit rates must increase to guarantee the ANSPs the re-quired revenues, while airlines have to face higher costs.
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Moreover, the IRCS analysis has shown that the present charging system:
- may produce distortions, and thus inefficiencies:
- routes can be longer than necessary to avoid “expensive” states,
- aircraft can be under utilised (configurations with lower MTOW values are sometimes used);
- an analytic accounting system is required, for both EUROCONTROL and the airlines;
- route optimisation is heavy: it needs large amounts of data and computing power.
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An innovative vision for route charges, which should
- promote integration among all actors;
- reduce perturbations in the system, as they produce additional costs;
- provide incentives / penalties fostering performance improvement.
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A review of ideas for new charging systems, with their expected impact on ANS provision and air transportation demand, such as:
- introduce a common unit rate all over Europe
- penalise who causes delays
- support ACCs’ investments to improve performance
- incentivate the renewal of technical equipment on aircrafts for a simpler and cheaper control and for higher safety levels
- partial compensations
- relate charges to passengers (charges proportional, e.g., to ticket price or to load factor)
- introduce demand management measures
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WP8 (Jan-04)
Castelli L., Omero M., Pesenti R., Ukovich W.
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Last validation: 15/03/2007
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