Contacts
Contact organisation | EUROCONTROL: The European organisation for the safety of air navigation |
Contact organisation unit | Directorate European Civil-Military Aviation - Performance Review Unit (DECMA/PRU) |
Contact name | Performance Review Unit - EUROCONTROL |
Contact mail address | 96 Rue de la Fusée 1130 Brussels Belgium |
Contact e-mail address | [email protected] |
Metadata update
Metadata last certified | not applicable |
Metadata last update | 15 July 2021 |
Statistical presentation
Data description
ATFM departure slots are allocated centrally by the European Network Manager upon the request of the local Flow Management Position (FMP), when an imbalance between demand and capacity is foreseen at airports and/or en-route. The purpose of such regulation is to hold aircraft on the ground.
An ATFM slot tolerance window is available to ATC to sequence departures. The standard slot tolerance window is [-5 minutes, +10 minutes]. ATC at the departure airport has a joint responsibility with aircraft operators to ensure that flights departure within the allocated ATFM slot tolerance window in order to optimise traffic flow. ATFM departure slot adherence, simply named ATFM slot adherence hereafter, measures the share of take-offs inside the slot tolerance window of [-5 minutes, +10 minutes].
ATFM slot adherence monitoring is a pre-requisite to fine tune traffic predictions at the departure, en-route airspace and at the destination airports. The higher the number of regulated departing aircraft inside the assigned ATFM standard window, the more accurate the predicted traffic and associated down-stream ATFM measures.
ATFM slot adherence monitoring is required by SES legislation. The ATS units are required to provide the information regarding non-compliance to slot adherence for these airports where non-adherence equals or exceeds 20% of the regulated departures, as well as their action plans to mitigate such a non-compliance.
The Network Manager monitors ATFM slot adherence on a monthly basis.
The legislation also requires ATFM slot adherence to be monitored at local level, i.e. at national level with a breakdown at airport level.
Classification system
ATFM slot adherence is classified per Member State, with a breakdown for each airport subject to the SES performance scheme.
Sector coverage
The measures pertain to the Air Transport and Air Traffic Management Sector of the economy.
Statistical concepts and definitions
ATFM slot adherence is defined as the percentage of departures inside an ATFM slot tolerance window of [-5 minutes, +10 minutes].
Statistical unit
The statistical unit is the airport. Airport level data is also aggregated to States.
Statistical population
The statistical population is the set of ‘SES airports’ included in the SES performance scheme.
Reference area
- The first reference period (RP1) covers the calendar years 2012 to 2014 inclusive.
- The second reference period (RP2) covers the calendar years 2015 to 2019 inclusive.
- The third reference period (RP3) covers the calendar years 2020 to 2024 inclusive.
Unless decided otherwise, the following reference periods shall be of five calendar years.
Time coverage
The Network manager has monitored slot adherence to ATFM since 2011, but in the scope of the Performance Scheme, 2015 is the first year for which data is presented.
Base period
Not applicable.
Unit of Measure
The ATC pre-departure delay is measured in minutes per outbound IFR flight [min/departure].
Reference period
- The first reference period (RP1) covers the calendar years 2012 to 2014 inclusive.
- The second reference period (RP2) covers the calendar years 2015 to 2019 inclusive.
- The third reference period (RP3) covers the calendar years 2020 to 2024 inclusive.
Unless decided otherwise, the following reference periods shall be of five calendar years.
Institutional Mandate
Legal acts and agreements are established in the EU IR691/2010|Performance Regulation (691 / 2010), Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 390 / 2013 and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/317.
Confidentiality
The information is disseminated in accordance with the relevant SES legislation.
Release policy
Release calendar
ATFM slot adherence is released monthly with yearly aggregates.
Release calendar access
Not applicable.
User access
Information is disseminated to the general public via the SES Data Portal.
Frequency of dissemination
Data is published monthly with the annual performance aggregate being available in January of the following year.
Dissemination format
Information is disseminated to the general public via the SES Data Portal.
Accessibility of documentation
Documentation on methodology
As per the pertaining regulations (see Institutional Mandate).
For technical questions not addressed in Statistical processing
please contact: [email protected].
Additional definitions of the terms used in the frame of the this KPI
are available in the Metadata page.
Quality documentation
There is no specific documentation on procedures applied for quality management and quality assessment.
Quality Management
As per SES legislation,
The data providers shall take the necessary measures to ensure the quality, validation and timely transmission of the data, including providing evidence of their quality checks and validation processes, explanations in response to specific requests from the Commission regarding the quality of the data and, where necessary, action plans to improve data quality. The data shall be provided free of charge, in electronic form where applicable, using the format specified by the Commission.
Quality assurance
Data validation is performed by the Network manager.
Quality assessment
Quality assessment is under the responsibility of the Network manager.
Completeness
The data is collected for all airports subject to SES legislation.
Relevance
The information is published for performance monitoring purposes in accordance with the relevant SES legislation.
Accuracy and reliability
Overall accuracy
The information is published for performance monitoring purposes in accordance with the relevant SES legislation.
Sampling error
There is no sampling and therefore no sampling error.
Timeliness and punctuality
Timeliness
The information is published each month by the Network Manager in their “NM Monthly Adherence to ATFCM Slots” bulletin.
Punctuality
The internal databases are updated daily. The statistical processing is performed once per month.
Comparability
Comparability — geographical
The data is collected centrally by the Network Manager. The data is transmitted to the EUROCONTROL Performance Review Unit and computed consistently for all airports subject to SES legislation.
Comparability over time
Comparisons over time are valid.
Coherence
Coherence — cross domain
Not available.
Coherence — internal
Data is fully coherent from an internal perspective.
Cost and burden
Not available.
Data revision
No data revision foreseen.
Statistical processing
Source data
The input variables used for the calculation are detailed in the Statistical concepts and definitions section.
Frequency of data collection
The data is collected and transmitted for statistical processing on a monthly basis.
Data collection
The data is collected by the Network Manager.
Data validation
The data is validation as described in the Quality Management section.
Data compilation
The departure time of a regulated flight is inside the slot tolerance window when its Actual Take-off time (ATOT) is in a window starting 5 minutes before and ending 10 minutes after its Calculated Take-Off time (CTOT), i.e.
\[CTOT – 5 min <= ATOT <= CTOT + 10 min \]
It should be acknowledged that the exceptional extension of the standard ATFM slot tolerance window [-5 minutes, +10 minutes], as described in the ATFCM User Manual under 4.6.4 “Adverse Operating Conditions at Aerodromes”, is not taken into account in the calculation of ATFM slot adherence. These exceptions represent in most cases less than 2% of regulated flights.
The adherence to ATFM slots determines the percentage of regulated flights with an ATOT inside the slot tolerance window.
The Actual Take-Off time of a flight can be determined when the NM received an ATC activation message from its departure airport. Therefore, the assessment is made only for those flights for which an activation message at the origin airport (FSA message) or a Departure message (DEP) is available.
Adjustment
Corrections may be made when issues are discovered as described in the Quality Assessment section of this document.
Comment
No comments.
Disclaimer
This data is published by the Performance Review Body (PRB) of the Single European Sky. Every effort has been made to ensure that the information and analysis contained on this website are as accurate and complete as possible. Despite these precautions, should you find any errors or inconsistencies we would be grateful if you could please bring them to the Performance Review Unit’s attention.
The information may be copied in whole or in part providing that the copyright notice and disclaimer are included. The information may not be modified without prior written permission from the PRB. The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views or policy of EUROCONTROL or of the European Commission, which make no warranty, either implied or express, for the information contained on this website, neither do they assume any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of this information. The PRB reserves the right to change or amend the information provided at any time and without prior notice.