EUROPEAN ORGANISATION FOR THE SAFETY OF AIR NAVIGATION EUROCONTROL EXPERIMENTAL CENTRE Study of Low Cost Traffic Patterns EEC Note No. 06/04 Project NCD-F-FM Issued: March 2004 The information contained in this document is the property of the EUROCONTROL Agency and no part should be reproduced in any form without the Agency’s permission The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views or policy of the Agency. REPORT DOCUMENTATION PAGE Reference Security Classification EEC Note No. 06/04 Unclassified Originator Originator (Corporate author) Name/Location : EEC/NCD EUROCONTROL Experimental Centre B.P.15 (Network Capacity and Demand F-91222 Brétigny-sur-Orge CEDEX Management) France. Telephone: +33 (0) 1 69 88 75 00 Sponsor Sponsor (Contract Authority) Name/Location EUROCONTROL Agency Rue de la Fusée, 96 B-1130 BRUXELLES Telephone: +32-(0)2-729 90 11 Title : ANALYSIS OF LOW COST TRAFFIC PATTERNS Authors Date Pages Figs Tables Annexes References Virginie ALLAIN (SOFREAVIA) 03/04 iv + 35 12 16 3 5 Tarek BEN OMRANE (SOFREAVIA) Project Sponsor Task No. Period NCD NCD-F-FM Nov03 -Jan04 Distribution Statement : (a) Controlled by : Head of NCD business area (b) Special Limitations (if any) : None (c) Copy to NTIS : No Descriptors (keywords) : Low cost carriers, secondary airports, point to point network Abstract : This statistical study is aimed at analysing the low cost carriers flight patterns and comparing them with the rest of ECAC traffic. It is based on 5 traffic days selected in 2002 and 2003. No significant differences were identified between low cost flights and the other flight patterns. However, the departure and arrival flows are significantly different from the rest of the traffic, as LCCs have decided to develop their operations at secondary airports which may add capacity constraints by increasing TMA flow management and co-ordination problems bearing on the controller’s workload. FOREWORD The ACARE Strategy Research Agenda recognizes that the current air traffic management paradigm has serious limitations and will be unable to sustain current expectations of air transport growth in the medium to long-term. It is clear that at the 2020 time horizon, revolutionary measures is a necessity to response to the group of personalities visions 2020 objectives1. The future ATM system will be increasingly automated whilst the human will retain a significant, but different, role. In this system it is envisioned that traffic trajectories will be predicted in accordance with the level of system capabilities; defined roles and responsibilities of human and machine, ground and air elements addressing uncertainties and changes. In regards of this vision, one strategic axis in the Network & Capacity Demand Management (NCD) Research Area deals with the investigation of new airspace issues and how to accommodate airspace design and management with new constraints. In particular, the impact of new types of traffic needs to be assessed, since it is likely that the future will see a wider range of different categories of air vehicles and air transporters. In this context, NCD commissioned in 2003 a short study with the objective to look at the specific impact of low cost aircraft operators on the usage of airspace capacity. The emergence of low cost carriers has created new markets (UK-Carcassone, for instance), new city-pairs with reasonably dense traffic. Hence, the low costs carriers choice to link non- saturated airports platforms can be seen as a way by which optimal usage of available capacity can be sought. The issue is that the airspace infrastructure may not have been designed so as to accommodate these new traffic trends, and the purpose of the study was to analyse the difference, if any, in the flight patterns of low cost carriers and identify the possible issues this creates, now or in the future. Patrick KY Head of Network Capacity and Demand Management 1 As in the Group of Personalities vision for 2020, the traffic will triple, and 95% of flights will be within 15 minutes of their schedule, in all weather conditions. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION_______________________________________________________________ 1 1.1 Objectives ________________________________________________________________ 1 1.2 Scope of the study _________________________________________________________ 1 1.3 Traffic days _______________________________________________________________ 1 1.4 Data and tool used in the study_______________________________________________ 2 2 STUDY METHODOLOGY________________________________________________________ 2 3 OVERALL STATISTICS _________________________________________________________ 3 3.1 Characteristics of the sample ________________________________________________ 3 3.2 Traffic Share_______________________________________________________________ 3 3.3 Distribution of Low Cost movements by LCC ___________________________________ 5 3.4 Geographical analysis ______________________________________________________ 7 3.4.1 LCC network _________________________________________________________ 7 3.4.2 Main airports operating LC flights _________________________________________ 9 3.4.3 Main LC airport-pairs and LC city-pairs____________________________________ 11 3.5 Length and time distribution ________________________________________________ 16 4 TECHNICAL STATISTICS ______________________________________________________ 18 4.1 Aircraft type analysis ______________________________________________________ 18 4.2 Flight level analysis _______________________________________________________ 19 4.2.1 Average Requested Flight Level compared to flight distance___________________ 19 4.2.2 Most Requested FLs for flight lengths included between 200 and 500 NM ________ 20 4.3 ACC and Sector analysis ___________________________________________________ 21 4.3.1 Sample characteristics ________________________________________________ 21 4.3.2 ACC analysis________________________________________________________ 21 4.4 Sector analysis ___________________________________________________________ 25 4.4.1 Result by movements _________________________________________________ 25 5 SYNTHESIS _________________________________________________________________ 28 6 CONCLUSION _______________________________________________________________ 29 ANNEX 1 : ICAO CODE OF SELECTED LOW COST CARRIERS __________________________ 32 ANNEX 2 : MAIN AIRPORT AND CITY PAIRS__________________________________________ 33 ANNEX 3 : STATISTICAL PROCESSING OF THE DATA _________________________________ 34 iv 1 Introduction 1.1 Objectives The emergence of low cost carriers has developed new market segments in Air Transport. From an ATM standpoint those developments translate into fast-increasing traffic between new city pairs. Hence, the low cost carriers choice to link non-saturated airports platforms can be seen as a way by which optimal usage of available capacity can be sought. However, the current airspace structure may not have been designed so as to accommodate these new traffic trends, and the purpose of this study is to conduct a preliminary statistical analysis of flight patterns, comparing low cost carriers characteristics with the rest of the traffic and identifying potential challenges to ATM adaptability in the near future. 1.2 Scope of the study This statistical study is aimed at analysing the low cost carriers flight patterns and comparing them with the rest of ECAC traffic. This document does not attempt to define formally any economic-operational criteria about what makes an aircraft operator “low cost” or not. The approach was to establish a comprehensive list of so-called “low-cost” carriers, to be used as a filter in the analysis, and to analyse a few representative days of real traffic, selecting a mix of week days and week-end departure days, as low cost carriers target inter alia the “week end jaunt” travellers. To initiate a trend analysis, the interval between some samples was taken as about one year. The low cost carriers analysed in this document were taken to be : Aer Arann, Air Berlin GmbH & Co. Luftverkehrs KG, Azzurra Air, Debonair, Easyjet, FlyBe, German Wings, Germania Express, Go Fly Ltd., Hapag Loyd Express, Martinair, Meridiana, Ryanair, Sabre Airways Ltd, Sky Europe, Virgin Express (Belgium), Virgin Express (Ireland) Ltd., Volare.com. Some of these have started operations very recently, and therefore make only minor contributions to the traffic analysed in this document; others no longer exist today but contributed to the traffic of the days selected of the study. The low cost flight patterns have been characterised by establishing: • Global statistics, which gives a global picture of the low cost flight pattern; • Technical statistics, which enter more in depth in the ATM aspects of the flights. In view of the data/tools used and the duration of the study, only preliminary results could be provided which however allowed us to highlight general trends. 1.3 Traffic days 5 traffic days were selected for this study: • Monday, the 14th October 2002; • Monday, the 16th June 2003; • Friday, the 20th June 2003; • Monday, the 15th September 2003; • Friday, the 19th September 2003. Study of Low Cost Traffic Patterns 1 1.4 Data and tool used in the study CFMU flight data, provided by Eurocontrol, have been extracted from the CFMU ALL-FT files based on the latest known AOs’ demand (FTFM model). The ALL-FT file contains the flight data of all flights scheduled in the ECAC area on a given day. It gives the 4D profiles