Annual Monitoring Report 2023 - Romania
Contextual information
National performance plan adopted following Commission Decision (EU) 2022/2424 of 5 December 2022
List of ACCs 1
Bucharest ACC
No of airports in the scope of the performance plan
≥80’K 1
<80’K 1
Exchange rate (1 EUR=)
2017: 4.56629 RON
2023: 4.94375 RON
Share of Union-wide traffic (TSUs) 2023 4.8%
Share of Union-wide en route costs 2023 3.3%
Share en route / terminal costs 2023 91% / 9%
En route charging zone(s)
Romania
Terminal charging zone(s)
Romania
Main ANSP
• ROMATSA
Other ANSPs
–
MET Providers
–
Traffic (En route traffic zone)
▪ Romania recorded 769K actual IFR movements in 2023, +17% compared to 2022 (656K).
▪ Actual 2023 IFR movements were +9.5% above the plan (702K).
▪ Actual 2023 IFR movements are +3% above the actual 2019 level (747K).
▪ Romania recorded 5,920K actual en route service units in 2023, +24% compared to 2022 (4,770K).
▪ Actual 2023 service units were +7% below the plan (5,531K).
▪ Actual 2023 service units are +16% above the actual 2019 level (5,117K).
Safety (Main ANSP)
▪ ROMATSA reached the RP3 target maturity levels in 2021. Between 2022 and 2023, the achieved maturity level decreased in safety culture and safety risk management from level D to level C, but ROMATSA remain at the planned maturity levels defined in their Performance Plan for 2023. ROMATSA had in the Performance Plan planned reach RP3 target maturity levels only in 2024, improving safety risk management in 2024 to level D. ROMATSA, together with the NSA, developed a safety strategy including various measures to monitor the implementation and efficiency of safety actions to ensure high safety performance.
▪ Romania recorded stable performance with respect to safety occurrences, with no runway incursions and a decrease in the rate of separation minima infringements relative to 2022. The NSA regularly monitors the safety occurrences and perform specialized analysis on daily, quarterly, and yearly basis.
▪ ROMATSA do not use automated safety data recording systems.
Environment (Member State)
▪ Romania achieved a KEA performance of 3.61% compared to its target of 2.05% and did not contribute positively towards achieving the Union-wide target.
▪ The NSA states that reasons for deterioration include neighbouring airspace unavailability due to conflict zones, being upstream or downstream of ATM network inefficiencies, and airspace users’ preferences.
▪ KEP and SCR worsened compared to 2022.
▪ The share of CDO flights increased marginally from 40.63% to 40.70% in 2023.
▪ During 2023, additional time in terminal airspace increased from 0.58 to 0.63 min/flight, while additional taxi out time increased from 2.08 to 2.17 min/flight.
Capacity (Member State)
▪ Romania registered 0.20 minutes of average en route ATFM delay per flight during 2023 which has been adjusted to 0.16 during the post-ops adjustment process, thus not achieving the local target value of 0.04. Delays in Romania increased by 0.16 minutes per flight year-on-year.
▪ Delays accumulated between May and September, due to adverse weather conditions.
▪ The share of delayed flights with delays longer than 15 minutes in Romania increased by 43 percentage points compared to 2022 and was higher than 2019 values.
▪ The average number of IFR movements was 3% above 2019 levels in Romania in 2023.
▪ The number of ATCOs in OPS is expected to increase by 12% by 2024, with the actual value being below the 2023 plan in Bucharest by 3 FTEs.
▪ The yearly total of sector opening hours in Bucharest ACC was 69,428, showing a 1.2% increase compared to 2022. Sector opening hours are 1.2% above 2019 levels.
▪ Bucharest ACC registered 10.94 IFR movements per one sector opening hour in 2023, being 2.0% above 2019 levels.
▪ Romania was badly affected by adverse weather in 2023, resulting in unusually high levels of en route ATFM delay. As the uncertainty of weather impact is likely to increase, Romania should work closely with the NM and all concerned stakeholders to mitigate weather impact as much as possible.
Cost-efficiency (En route/Terminal charging zone(s))
▪ The en route 2023 actual unit cost of Romania was 33.98€2017, -5.1% lower than the determined unit cost (35.80€2017). The terminal 2023 actual unit cost was 299.92€2017, +13% higher than the determined unit cost (265.95€2017).
▪ The en route 2023 actual service units (5.9M) were +7.0% higher than the determined service units (5.5M).
▪ The en route 2023 actual total costs were +3.2M€2017 (+1.6%) higher than determined. The primary factor driving the difference in total costs was an overspend in staff costs (+7.8M€2017, or +5.3%), largely due to wage compensations awarded for higher than planned traffic and achieving the capacity target. The gap in staff costs was partially mitigated by an underspend in other operating costs (-4.0M€2017, or -13%). The difference in other operating costs was mainly attributed to lower energy expenses and delays in both the training program and the contracting processes with third-party service providers.
▪ ROMATSA spent 19M€2017 in 2023 related to costs of investments for both en route and terminal charging zones, -3.1% less than determined (20M€2017), mainly due to delays in new investment projects.
▪ The en route actual unit cost incurred by users in 2023 was 44.07€ (+5.9% above the 2023 DUC), while the terminal actual unit cost incurred by users was 351.53€ (+12% above the 2023 DUC).