Will the new Vienna centre have sufficient capacity when it opens?

CEATS (Central European Air Traffic Services) Upper Airspace Control Centre will be a EUROCONTROL Centre (similar to Maastricht UAC) providing air traffic services, above FL 285, in the region where traffic is currently handled by the Vienna, Zagreb, Prague, Budapest, Padua, Bratislava and Ljubljana control centres.

FAP study

The FAP (Future ATM Profile) team within the Network Capacity and Demand Management (NCD) research area was asked to provide:

· A capacity baseline for 2007, the expected opening year of the Centre,

· A study of transition phases, because a step-wise transition strategy was adopted rather than a big bang approach.

1. Baseline

The question is: what is the traffic likely to be in 2007 and will CEATS be able to handle it?

To forecast the 2007 traffic, FAP uses the EUROCONTROL STATFOR predictions (demand growth per city pairs), and also adds assumptions dealing with the future route network and its utilisation. Furthermore, it takes into account the future airports capacities to distribute the flights realistically, especially for the congested airports.

To assess the centre capacity, FAP uses PACT (the Portable ACC Capacity evaluation Tool) developed by NCD and distributed to all ANSPs. This tool calculates ACC capacity based on sector capacities. These sector capacities have been evaluated by Fast Time Simulations now conducted by CRDS (CEATS Research & Development & Simulation Centre, in Budapest).

2. Transition phase

In addition to the capacity assessment for the whole CEATS centre, CSPDU (CEATS Strategic Planning & Development Unit, in Prague) and CRDS asked FAP to study the 2007 baselines of five sub-centres to plan transition steps. The different options were four geographical zones or a vertical split at FL345.

FAP was also asked to assess the impact of likely reduced sector capacities during the first implementation days.

Results and Follow-up

The study found that one sub-centre would not be able to manage the traffic in 2007, due to a bottleneck at the sector level (C10 sector). The rest of CEATS UAC will be sufficiently dimensioned, provided no staffing issues, to cope with the demand in 2007 and probably several years onwards.

The note also shows that the proposed reduced capacities should only be in force for a very short period of time, as they will not be sufficient to handle the traffic in 2007.

Such a FAP study will be repeated each year and the EEC will now be part of the CEATS simulations team from the very beginning of each exercise.

See the full report

For further information contact Marc Dalichampt

Network Capacity and Demand Management (NCD) Research Area