High-level Summary Report on Preliminary ACE 2023 Data

EUROCONTROL's Performance Review Unit (PRU) releases a new high-level summary report on preliminary ACE data, commissioned by the Performance Review Commission.

The objective of this document is to provide a first insight on the level of 2023 cost-effectiveness performance both for the Pan-European system and for individual ANSPs before the release of the final ACE benchmarking report, which is planned end of May 2025. This document also presents financial indicators extracted from the ANSPs Financial Indicators Dashboard and monitoring ANSPs’ cash holdings and liquidity.

In September, the PRU published first insights into the 2023 cost-effectiveness performance at pan-European ATM system level. The High-level Prelimiary Report, published in December, provides additional analysis, looking at several cost-effectiveness indicators for individual ANSPs. Some key findings:

Traffic (measured in composite flight-hours) rose by +11% in 2023 but remained -4% lower than in 2019. At ANSP level, a wide range of different trends is observed (from -43% to +63%). The war in Ukraine resulted in airspace closures and bans on air carriers which impacted traffic flows in Europe.
ATFM delays in 2023 rose substantially and reached a level comparable to that of 2019, which was a year marked by significant capacity issues for several ANSPs. As a result, the share of ATFM delays in the 2023 unit economic costs amounted to 24%.
Total ATM/CNS provision costs rose by +3% (+€272M) in 2023, reflecting cost increases for 27 out of 38 ANSPs. The main cost categories driving this increase were staff costs (+5% or +€309M) and non-staff operating costs (+6% or +€99M).
Despite these increases, ANSPs’ cost-bases were still -€360M (-4%) lower than in 2019 owing to the significant cost-savings achieved by ANSPs at system level in 2020 and 2021.
In 2023, the number of ATM/CNS staff was slightly higher than in 2022 (+1% or +537 FTEs), mainly because of increases in the number of ATCOs in OPS (+231 FTEs), OPS support staff (+122 FTEs) and technical support staff for operational maintenance (+112 FTEs).
Although the level of debt fell by -11% in 2023, short and long-term borrowings still represented 2.5 times the amount recorded in 2019.