Strategic planning and development of Air Traffic Management system in Europe: A capacity-based review

Nowadays there may be different strategic drivers between Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) in Europe. However, far less than before market deregulation and liberalization, and before 2004 when European Commission (EC) established Single European Sky (SES) initiative. The introduction of two SES regulative packages and the European ATM Master Plan imposed the obligation to the ANSPs in Europe to strive for common strategic goals - articulated in terms of Key Performance Areas (KPA): capacity, safety, environment and cost- efficiency. All the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of listed KPAs are based on the adoption of the one-size-fits-all principle. In that respect, this paper evaluates conceptual and methodological assumptions of strategic planning and development framework of the ATM systems in Europe from a capacitive viewpoint. It provides a review of flaws identified by studying the applicability of the performance target defined by EC for capacity as one of four KPAs. As such, in a concise review, the paper reveals shortcomings of conceptual and methodological assumptions, performance differences and gaps, their implications, ANSPs with under-defined and above-defined performance targets, i.e., strategic goals from a capacitive viewpoint and points out flaws that need to be revised to better reflect settings of the ATM system in Europe.