Background EG 5 Air

Airport charging systems in the Community differ considerably from one Member states to another and sometimes even within a single Member state. They nevertheless include some basis elements such as airport facilities like landing, parking, storage facilities as well as aircraft passenger and freight services.

Some criteria are in common use in airport charging systems. These include notably the type of flight, the mass of aircraft, the noise category, or the parking time.

In the present situation, landing or passenger charges levels vary significantly between countries and airports and the relationships between actual costs and charges lacks of transparency.

It should be noted that in the context of European single sky policy, there are rules in place for both en-route and terminal charges. These charges aims at covering the costs generated by air traffic flow management.

Research in the aviation sector has not reached the maturity stage of other modes (see e.g. road and rail transport), and measurement of impacts and costs is still a debated issue. This has impacts on the range of pricing policies which are possible to adopt: for instance, new pricing mechanisms such as en-route charging, have not been studied because en-route impacts and cost have yet to be accurately measured.

Some of the research looking into the measurement of average and marginal costs in the transport sector and possible implementation paths for pricing reforms based on social marginal costs also looked at the air transport sector. Concerning costing, the objective of UNITE (UNIfication of accounts and marginal costs for Transport Efficiency) objective of the project was to support policy makers in setting charges for the use of transport infrastructure by the provision of appropriate methodologies and empirical evidence.

Recent and more specific studies concern:

• Impact on the environment of Air Traffic Management: the project “ATM Flight Efficiency and its Impact on the environment”, executed by EUROCONTROL, was set up to develop indicators that can be used to measure the impact of the ATM (Air Traffic Management) system on the environment. These indicators measure the efficiency of the actual routes and profiles flown in terms of distance, flight duration, fuel burn and costs to airlines and environment.

• Evaluation of delay costs: The study “Evaluating the true cost to airlines of one minute of airborne or ground delay” evaluated the true cost to airlines of one minute of airborne or ground delay. The Transport Studies Group at the University of Westminster (London) completed the study for the Performance Review Unit (PRU), at EUROCONTROL (Brussels). The key objectives of the Study were essentially to establish transparent reference values, which are operationally meaningful, for the costs incurred by airlines as a result of airborne and ground delays.

Further information