Performance Review Commission issues the 2025 edition of its ATM Cost-Effectiveness Benchmarking Report

“I am very proud of this new ACE benchmarking report, which provides detailed analysis of changes in ANSPs’ costs, staff numbers and capital expenditure in a context of traffic recovery. The new analysis on economic cost-effectiveness shows that despite composite flight-hours being lower than in 2019, ATFM delays reached historical high levels. As a result, excluding the years affected by the COVID crisis, unit economic costs in 2023 were the highest recorded in the last decade.

As indicated in the PRC's latest Performance Review Report (PRR), there appears to be a shortfall in ATCO numbers for some ANSPs and there is an urgent need to recruit more and/or make sure that they are adequately and flexibly deployed in order to meet future traffic demand. Clearly, insufficient capacity levels lead to disproportionately higher costs for airspace users and passengers, which may far exceed the costs associated with deploying additional ATCOs.”