Traffic continued to grow throughout the busy summer season with travelers making up for lost travel opportunities during the pandemic years. The growth year-over-year is quite substantial!
Starting with the summary view across the EUROCONTROL airspace. According to their recently published statistics, “in the 3 months of summer 2024 (June, July and August), traffic in the European aviation network was 4.8% up compared to the same three months of 2023, with an average of 34,042 flights per day”. But as we’re all well aware, this is an average figure and certain regions had much higher growth figures to contend with.
Contributing factors – impacts to performance
Our region faced impacts from multiple external factors during this time. Not only was there an increase in holiday travelers, but this summer also brought more severe weather situations than last year and traffic rerouting due to the conflicts in the Ukraine and the Middle East playing a role.
EUROCONTROL’s overview of network performance highlighted ACC’s that faced significantly higher traffic than others across Europe. Within the FAB CE airspace, the following ACCs had growth rates exceeding the average - Zagreb ACC (Croatia, +12%), Prague ACC (Czech Republic, +11%), Bratislava ACC (Slovakia, +10%) and Ljubljana ACC (Slovenia, +10%). Budapest ACC and Vienna ACC also experienced +4% traffic growthe above previous forecasts.
Martin Stieber, Head of ATM OPS Performance, Austro Control, stated, “during summer season 2024 the majority of ATC Units within FAB CE have encountered an extremely high traffic increase compared to 2023, which was partly even above the forecasted high growth scenarios.”
Looking a little deeper into the overall figures provided by EUROCONTROL, we see a few trends emerge that impact ATFM delay. A combination of factors caused these levels of delay: structural capacity shortfalls, unexpected traffic growth in parts of the network, significant convective weather (thunderstorms, etc.), less airspace available for re-routings due to the war in Ukraine and the Middle East - avoiding the Middle East and flying via Saudi Arabia and Egypt to Central Europe, increased military activity, and a lack of adherence to the planned vertical levels in flight plans.
ATFM delays for the core summer months of June to August 2024 were an average of 5.4 minutes per flight, which was 41% above 2023. July was particularly challenging, with ATFM delays of 6.5 minutes per flight. The weather-related ATFM delay per flight (2.2min/flight) was 41% more than in 2023. ATC capacity delays driven by known issues accounted for 1.9 minutes per flight, 82% more than 2023.
Stieber also added, “daily peaks have even reached all-time highs during this period, e.g. Wien ACC Vienna with 4,193 flights on the 30th of June, which included so called ‘intruders’ (rerouted flights avoiding heavy thunderstorms and cumulonimbus in Eastern Europe, which were originally not planned to cross Vienna ACC).”. "But I have to say, that coordination with EUROCONTROL / Network Manager was extremely close and supportive in order to react on the various traffic scenarios.”