ENAIRE's Board of Directors approves the 2019-2020 Summer Plan

-The company of the Public Works Department that manages air traffic in Spain, expects approximately 659,000 flights between June and August, 4.6% more than in the same quarter of last year

"The passengers and general interest must be our priority, and obviously, safety too, which is the key pillar of air transport", said the Secretary of State and Chairman of ENAIRE, Pedro Saura

- The sense of anticipation is setting the preparatory work being carried out within a framework of collaboration with Aena, the airlines, other air navigation providers, other countries and the EUROCONTROL network manager

- The Plan is mobilising multiple initiatives and measures in the technical and operational scope, both nationally and internationally, as well as in regard to increasing the number of air traffic controllers

- There are actions at corporate level that run through the entire ENAIRE Network and specific actions for each of ENAIRE's 5 Regions: the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands and the Northern-Central, Eastern and Southern Regions

- Particularly noteworthy are the ‘BCN À PUNT’ initiative promoted by the Ministry of Public Works to improve operations in Barcelona-El Prat Airport and ENAIRE's Atenea office, aimed at maximising-optimising the capacity of El Prat on the land and in the air

- The investment planned by ENAIRE in technological modernisation for this year 2019 exceeds 100 million euros, which is part of the total investment budget for the Strategic Plan (2020 Flight Plan), amounting to 370 million euros

Approximately 659,000 flights expected between June and August, that is, 4.6% more despite the context of uncertainty

ENAIRE expected about 659,000 flights between June and August, 4.6% more than in the same quarter of last year

Last summer, ENAIRE operated 629,816 flights from 1 June to 31 August. This summer it expects to operate around 658,800 flights, 4.6% more (approximately 29,000 more flights).

The estimated growth is the result of all the work that has been carried out for months to face the high season, with traffic peaks of over 7,000 flights a day, in the best possible conditions.

Despite the context of uncertainty (Brexit, price of fuel, competition of the new emerging tourist destinations, etc.), ENAIRE expects to break the record set in 2018.

ANNUAL EVOLUTION OF FLIGHTS MANAGED BY ENAIRE (in millions)

Safety, capacity, efficiency and technological modernisation

The Summer Plan, designed with anticipation, is the sum of many initiatives and months of human and investment effort, where nothing has been left to improvisation.

The three major lines of activity framed within ENAIRE's Strategic Plan, the 2020 Flight Plan, are:

1. The Safety Plan.

2. The Airspace Capacity and Efficiency Plan.

3. The Technological Modernisation Plan.

List of most relevant operations
The main technical and operational measures are:

- Improvements in air sectorisation in Barcelona, Palma (Menorca sector), Madrid (Santiago sector) and the Canary Islands
- Increase of landing capacity in Barcelona, Madrid, Palma and Gran Canaria
- Improvement of the management and sequence of take-offs in Barcelona and Madrid
- Improvement in the approximations to Gran Canaria and Tenerife Sur airports
- New technological functionalities: controller-pilot data link in Barcelona, Madrid, Palma de Mallorca and Malaga airports; improvement in security networks; aids in managing the sequence of take-offs and arrivals; and operations with no paper sheet in El Prat and Barajas
- New ENAIRE Terminal Area Control Centre (TACC Levante) in Valencia.
- Improvements in predicting and handling the impacts of bad weather conditions

Bad weather conditions in the spotlight

One of the elements to strongly consider is bad weather, in view of last summer's experience: August was the month with the highest number of incidents of lightning and thunderstorms ever registered in the records held by the State Meteorological Agency (AEMET). In 2018, air adjustments due to bad weather conditions grew by 150%.

ENAIRE and Aena have thus created a work team that is analysing and planning how to deal with the bad weather conditions as effectively as possible.

In addition, ENAIRE has transferred to AEMET the need of promoting a project that includes the physical presence of predictors in control centres.

Quality of service, one of ENAIRE's priorities

With regard to punctuality, it is important to highlight that out of the total number of flights managed by ENAIRE in 2018, delays due to Spanish adjustments only represented 30% of the total adjustments, which include European delays within the flights managed by ENAIRE.

In the total European delay, ENAIRE's en route delays only reached 6.7%.

In percentage terms, Spanish air traffic was 160% higher than European air traffic. However, the evolution of en route delays in our country was more satisfactory, representing one third of the European figures. If we also disregard the effect of weather, the delay would have been reduced to 0.43%.

COMPARISON AVERAGE DELAY PER FLIGHT AND TRAFFIC SPAIN VS EUROPE

In the entire ENAIRE Network, the average delay per en route flight - indicating the service quality level for European air navigation service providers- was of 0.59 minutes/flight, without counting the effects not attributable to ENAIRE, such as strikes by service providers in collateral countries, which especially affected the Barcelona-El Prat Airport.

In the entire ENAIRE Network, the average delay per en route flight -indicating the service quality level for European air navigation service providers- was of 0.59 minutes/flight, without counting the effects not attributable to ENAIRE, such as strikes by service providers in collateral countries, which especially affected the Barcelona-El Prat Airport.

With regard to human resources, ENAIRE's adaptation and optimisation of air traffic controllers will materialise in 2019 by incorporating 84 new positions, of which 63 are expected to be trained according to the instruction processes.

Of these 63, more than half (34) will be destined to the Eastern Region, which increases its staff from 456 to 490.

In the last three years ENAIRE has offered 367 new air traffic controller positions. The last call, published in the Spanish Official Gazette of 2 November 2018, involved 131 permanent positions.

Measures at community level and collaboration with other airlines

There are so many factors and such is the degree of interdependence between the different agents that intervene in the air transport's value chain that not designing an action plan at a country level without including a coordinated action at a pan-European scale would be senseless.

In this line, EUROCONTROL is promoting very specific measures, in which ENAIRE plays a very active role, such as analysing the balance between the real and projected demand; the cooperation between the different air navigation service providers; improving the interface between France and Spain; or reviewing the capacity of certain sectors, among others.

To this end, meetings have been planned between ENAIRE, EUROCONTROL and DSNA (the air navigation provider in France) in the next month of February in order to improve the interface between both countries and design a package of measures aimed at mitigating the effects of air control strikes like those that took place last year in Marseille. Also in February, a meeting will be held with the airlines to reinforce even further the framework for collaboration.

The lowering of ENAIRE's en route charges

The lowering of ENAIRE's en route charges (mainland and the Canary Islands), as well as the freezing the approximation rates, has become effective as of 1 January, and this will save airlines one hundred million euros, which is what ENAIRE will stop receiving as a consequence of the reduction.

The lowering of en route charges has taken place after the 3% reduction applied in 2018, which is thanks to the efficiency and considerable growth of air traffic. The Spain-mainland en route charge for this year 2019 is 7% lower than the average charges in Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom.

In short, ENAIRE now has some of the lowest, and therefore most competitive, en route charges amongst Europe's leading air navigation providers.

More than 100 million euros invested in 2019

Technological modernisation is a key pillar in ENAIRE. For this year 2019, the planned investment amounts to 100.1 million euros, which is part of the total 370 million euros allocated to the Flight Plan.

About ENAIRE

ENAIRE is the company belonging to the Public Works Department that handles air navigation in Spain. It renders aerodrome control services at 21 airports, including those with the most traffic. All aircraft crossing the airspace assigned to our country receive communications, navigation and surveillance services using ENAIRE's modern network of facilities, consisting of: 5 control centres, 2 terminal area control centres, 237 radio aids providing en-route guiding and approach support for airports,
54 en-route, approach and surface surveillance systems, 90 communications centres (combining transmitter/receiver centres and control towers), 100 REDAN voice and data communication nodes for air navigation applications, 126 control tower posts and 153 control centre posts.

Last year, ENAIRE exceeded the mark of 2 million managed flights, transporting over 300 million passengers.