Benchmarking Of Area Control Center In FABEC Context

Abstract

This paper deals with a performance assessment of European Air Navigation Providers on Area Control Center level. Based on a requirement analysis considering tasks and functionality of an ANSP, an evaluation of potential methodologies determined the application of the multidimensional Data Envelopment Analysis as an appropriate procedure for assessment activities. Official reports like the ATM Cost Effectiveness Report published by EUROCONTROL as well as several scientific studies provide a first approach to ANSP benchmarking. However, since an ANSP is represented by several operational levels this paper is aims to dig deeper. Therefore, we analyzed 14 ACCs of six European ANSPs, organized in the conglomerate of the Functional Airspace Block European Central (FABEC). Furthermore, we ran a Malmquist analysis in order to gain information about the efficiency and productivity developments over time. Four models were created in order to cover different ANSP requirements, to test the influence of ATFM-delay as a proxy for service quality and to check the DEA model for robustness. The paper shows that the application of DEA lead to plausible and stable results.