ENAIRE obtains the highest level of customer satisfaction since records began
At its meeting yesterday afternoon, ENAIRE's Board of Directors offered a positive appraisal of ENAIRE's activities and results over the course of 2021, including having achieved the highest level of customer satisfaction in 2021 since records began (2002). ENAIRE's overall perceived quality (PQ) in the past year was 75.4%, 2.7 percentage points higher than in 2020.
Customer satisfaction with ENAIRE's services was 90.9% for the airport segment, 9.6 points higher than in 2020.
Similarly, the Board of Directors welcomed the fact that the European Commission singled out ENAIRE in its key effectiveness indicator of aviation safety as a European leader in this field.
ENAIRE includes safety as the first and most important goal in its Strategic Plan, 2025 Flight Plan, and reinforces safety, paying particular attention to the safety culture, the human factor and cybersecurity in response to newly emerging risks.
According to the European standard, the five components of ENAIRE's Safety Management System are at the highest possible level (100% maturity): Safety policy and goals, Safety culture, Risk Management, Safety Assurance and Safety Promotion.
Protecting the sky
Aviation sustainability is another pillar of ENAIRE's 2025 Flight Plan, and the efficiency of Spanish routes is part of its Environmental Strategy. According to the KEA indicator, the Spanish route network was 96.7% efficient in 2021 (in 2019 it was 96.3%).
This equates to saving one million nautical miles for airlines, saving 10,500 tonnes of fuel and avoiding 33,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions compared to 2019.
As an additional measure to protect our skies, in 2021, 81% of all flights employed continuous climb, 70% were direct and, and 35% landed using a continuous descent.
Support for the aviation sector
In order to help the aviation sector recover, route charges were reduced by 11% in the mainland and 8.5% in the Canary Islands in 2021. Of the 38 countries in EUROCONTROL, Spain is the one that reduced its air navigation charges the most.
Between 2020 and 2021, ENAIRE lowered its continental route charge by 26%, and in the Canary Islands by 20%. In these times of crisis, these reductions provide significant support to the aviation sector, and ENAIRE's have been the largest of any European air navigation service provider during this period. These reductions were in addition to those ENAIRE already made in 2018 and 2019.
Recovery of air traffic
In 2021, ENAIRE saw traffic recover to more than 55% of pre-COVID levels (55.3%). Specifically, 1,188,943 flights were managed in 2021, 44.7% fewer than in 2019 and 39.6% more than in 2020.
Traffic in Spain, with 3,257 daily flights on average, ranked third in Europe in 2021, only behind France and Germany. The trend toward returning to pre-COVID traffic levels was reinforced in the last few months of the year.
Compared to 2020, Spain saw a traffic increase that was 12.4 percentage points higher than Europe, with an average en-route delay of 0.20 minutes per flight below that of the rest of Europe.
This traffic recovery led to the improved economic performance of Spain's air navigation service provider, which invested 124.4 million euros in 2021, of which 53.8 million will be subsidised through European funds in 2022.
2025 Flight Plan
ENAIRE's 2021-2025 Strategic Plan, the so-called 2025 Flight Plan, approved by its Board of Directors on 30 April 2021, seeks to profoundly transform and modernise the company to turn it into a global service operator in response to the structural changes in the industry, and to spearhead the construction of the Single European Sky.
Satellite constellation
On 18 May 2021, the Council of Ministers also green-lit the creation of the company STARTICAL, a public-private initiative created by ENAIRE and Indra to bring innovative technologies to satellite services for tracking and communicating with air traffic. STARTICAL, which will launch into orbit a constellation of more than 200 small satellites, will allow Spain to be at the forefront of the provision of these services worldwide.
Essential U-space service provider for drones
In 2021, ENAIRE began the development of a U-space platform that, in keeping with the EU's regulation on U-space, will allow ENAIRE to be certified and designated by the State as a Common Information Services Provider (CISP). ENAIRE's U-space platform will support the exchange of operational data between U-Space Service Providers (USSP) and providers of air traffic services (ATS), enabling the automated and digitised management of a high volume of simultaneous beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations in U-space airspace volumes. ENAIRE will play a key role in managing drone traffic, as well as in the future of Urban Air Mobility, which includes air taxis.
EFQM 500
In 2021, ENAIRE obtained the EFQM 500 international certification. ENAIRE is the first medium/large state-owned company in Spain to receive an EFQM 500 Seal.
About ENAIRE
ENAIRE is the air navigation service provider in Spain.
As a company of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, it provides en route control services for all flights and overflights from five control centres in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, Gran Canaria and Palma, as well as approach services to every airport in the country.
In addition, 45 control towers receive ENAIRE's communication, navigation and surveillance services, and 21 airports, including the country's busiest, rely on its aerodrome control services.
ENAIRE is Europe's fourth largest air traffic manager. Since 1 January 2022, it has chaired the A6 Alliance, a coalition of air navigation providers responsible for over 80% of European air traffic, and which is seeking to modernise the air traffic management system. It is also a member of other international alliances promoting the Single European sky, such as SESAR Joint Undertaking, SESAR Deployment Manager, iTEC, CANSO and ICAO.
Number of the Department of communication +34 912 967 551
Communication department email address comunicacion@enaire.es