PRC Performance Insight #10 - ATM Cost-Effectiveness

A review of ANSPs regulatory, institutional and corporate governance arrangements

This Performance Insight provides a review of the regulatory and institutional context in which Air Navigation Providers (ANSPs) operate and looks at the different corporate governance arrangements currently in place.

The predominant regulatory regime for ANS is economic regulation, but non-SES States continue to use the full cost-recovery approach. Most ANSPs are fully State-owned. Only ENAV and NATS have a mix of public and private ownership.
ANSPs subject to economic regulation were able to maintain their cost-base fairly stable between 2012 and 2019. However, some of them exhibited substantial capacity issues especially in 2018 and 2019. This indicates the need to find a better balance between cost-effectiveness and capacity performance.
ATCO productivity for the full cost-recovery and State bodies ANSPs were typically below the European average (except in 2022). Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) were consistently above average and showed a less severe drop during the pandemic. This result potentially indicates differing levels of flexibility in response to crisis situations.
Between 2012 and 2022, full cost-recovery ANSPs had the highest number of support staff per unit of output. ANSPs under economic regulation were quite close, with PPPs consistently showing the lowest number of unit support staff over the period.
Terminal ANS provision in some States has been liberalised, allowing for greater competition in this segment. For instance, in the UK, Spain, and Sweden the market shares of the non-incumbent ANSPs respectively represented 39%, 25% and 14% in 2022.
Although interesting findings emerged at aggregated level when considering different regulation regimes or legal statuses, there is no clear and straightforward relationships between individual ANSPs performance and the regulatory regime / legal status.

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This PRC Performance Insight document has been prepared by the EUROCONTROL Performance Review Unit (PRU) for the Performance Review Commission (PRC).

The PRC conducts independent measurement, assessment and review of the performance of the Pan-European Air Navigation Services (ANS) system, including its contribution to the efficiency of Pan-European aviation. The PRC strives to identify future improvements and makes recommendations as appropriate.

The PRC maintains open and transparent dialogue with relevant parties, including but not limited to States, Air Navigation Service Providers, Airspace Users, Airports, social dialogue partners, civil-military organisations, international and national organisations, etc. The PRC conducts research into the development of performance measurement. This includes, inter alia, investigating how performance could best be described/measured in the long-term, developing and testing proposals for future indicators and metrics and contributing to future improvements in performance.

The PRC disseminates the results of its analysis to relevant parties, provided that no sensitive data are involved, in order to demonstrate the PRC’s commitment to transparency and to promote the application of PRC analysis.

The PRC produces independent ad-hoc studies, either on its own initiative and/or at the request of relevant parties.