Summary of capacity performance
Hungary experienced an increase in traffic from 1034k flights in 2023 to 1100k flights; during the same period en route ATFM delays increased from 832k minutes to 3014k minutes. For reference in 2019, HungaroControl handled 892k flights with 1.4 million minutes of en route ATFM delay.)
There were an additional 119k minutes of ATFM delay originating in other States that were re-attributed to the HungaroControl via the NM post operations delay attribution process, according to the NMB agreement for eNM/S24 measures, to ameliorate the capacity shortfall in Budapest ACC. (59k minutes in Serbia & Montenegro; 58k in Bulgaria; 2k in Greece; <1k in Slovakia; and <1k in Romania).
NSA’s assessment of capacity performance
1 . The Ukrainian war continued to have a significant impact on both the operational and the economic context of the ANS service provision in Hungary. Operational: due to the closure of the Ukrainian airspace and the war-related sanctions, there have been reroutings in the Hungarian airspace, having a net positive and ever growing impact on the number of overflights. Traffic to and from Russia and Ukraine is missing, but on the other hand, reroutings to and from North Europe, and the Far East (and other parts of Asia), as well as new routes between Russia and non-EU states have brought a significant amount of additional traffic. Traffic demand was to increase further in 2024, as the traffic between Europe and Asia (mainly China) started to gain momentum. The Hungarian ANSP experienced a very strong recovery (with ENR flights passing the 2019-level by +23% on avg in 2024), and this was only in part a consequence of the reroutings, there was also a very strong increase of the organic traffic on the South-East axis. Especially in the summer, when leisure traffic from Western Europe to Greece and Türkiye created an unexpected high demand on our flow.
In addition to the already high demand, ANS provision was impacted by the war in one more way: there were military airspaces to decrease capacity and to increase momentary complexity in the Hungarian airspace.
2. CAP KPIs were also impacted by the traffic growth: The war has caused a significant increase of traffic in Budapest ACC, resulting in +23% on avg vs2019 levels in 2024. Budapest ACC was able to manage the traffic growth but with around the clock regulations and significant delays. Although Hungary was one of the delay hotspots in 2024, it should be noted that air traffic on the Eastern border of the Network was operated without any particular problems. In the summer of 2024, the capacity problems caused by the influx of traffic were compounded by extremely bad weather. With the number of days with thunderstorms significantly higher than in previous years, it is likely that the effects of global warming in continental areas will be felt this way in the future. Learning from last year’s weather, meteorological staff will be present in the ops room in 2025.
Our view is that a very significant part of the excess delay BUDAPEST ACC struggled with in 2024 was due to the war. And in agreement with NM, also in 2024 we reported our delay minutes associated with the war (based on some method agreed with the NM) under the “O” other delay category.
3. Reaction time: In 2023 already, ATCO training was ramped up (number of trainees was increased to maximum training capacity) to react to the explosion of traffic demand. However, the first ATCOs from this course will start work only in 2025. Therefore in the short run (i.e. through 2023-2024) capacity problems deteriorated. Even the increased number of trainees will not be enough to serve this traffic we are currently serving. HungaroControl has started to explore further options to provide the necessary number of ATCOs, as the originally planned number of ATCOs is not (and will not be) enough to manage the traffic without disruptions (regulations, delays and re-routings of the re-routings).
Monitoring process for capacity performance
Due to the third year of war in the neighbouring country, turnover in the ACC in Budapest continued to increase, resulting in 25% higher turnover compared to pre-COVID 2019 levels.
Unfortunately, Budapest ACC was not able to repeat the good performance of previous years and further reduce delays compared to 2019, mainly due to insufficient ATCO staff to safely manage traffic and extremely unfavourable weather conditions.
NSA has monitored the roster planning for the summer season and also the evaluation of ATCO utilisation during the daily shift rostering.
The workload of the ATCOs and the ACC sectors was also monitored and it was found that the number of intruders in certain sectors was very high, which often resulted in overloading of the sectors.
Delay trends were also constantly monitored, but given the ATCO resources available, no potential areas of intervention were identified that could significantly reduce delays.
Capacity planning
Already during the capacity planning for 2024 which was completed in January was clear that there will be capacity problems during summer period.
The main reason for the capacity issues was the lack of sufficient number of ACC ATCOs, which made impossible to open as much sector as needed. The rostering plan for the summer was aligned, in order to be able to open 7 sectors during the busiest periods of the day.
In addition to that, all office staff with valid ACC licences have been assigned to work as much as possible in the ACC sectors in Budapest.
Unfortunately, just before the summer season, the number of available ACC ATCOs dropped by almost 10%, mainly due to the departure of ATCOs to foreign ACCs and prolonged illnesses, which ruined the preliminary plans and made it very often impossible to operate in 7 sectors.
Application of Corrective Measures for Capacity (if applicable)
The war in Ukraine has continued a significant impact on traffic figures in Budapest ACC, and as a consequences the traffic was well above the pre-COVID 2019 traffic levels in 2024.
The drop in available ACC ATCOs just before the summer season and the adverse weather conditions during the high traffic period resulted that the applied measures which were introduced by HungaroControl ATM management was not enough to mitigate the capacity shortage.
Unfortunately, it has become clear that capacity cannot be further increased just by modifying the duty rostering and there are no indications that the war in Ukraine will end in the near future, and with the demand for overflight traffic in the Budapest ACC still very high, the number of available ATCOs needs to be increased, which can be achieved in the short term by recruiting foreign ATCOs and in the medium term by increasing training capacity.
Considering the training efficiency, it is necessary to increase the initial number of students in the training courses in order to ensure that the planned number of ATCO students would obtain their licences at the end of the on-the job training.
Additional measures to improve performance include:
- Review of sector capacity values - the ACC en-route sectors capacity values will be reviewed as a result of a CAPAN study (As a result of CAPAN study, certain sectors will have capacity adjustments in Q2 2025);
- Recruiting foreign ATCOs - ACC licensed foreign ATCOs to be trained for KFOR sector in order to increase the number of ATCOs in the Budapest ACC sectors (11 ACC licensed foreign ATCOs started training for KFOR sector in 2024);
- Redesign the traffic flows in order to better use the capacity of available ACC sectors - with the help of the NM, certain traffic flows are redicrected into sectors where traffic complexity is low, allowing a large number of aircraft to be handled.
En route Capacity Incentive Scheme
HungaroControl: According to incentive scheme defined in monitoring report a penalty of HUF 204 386 675 is due.
In accordance with Article 3(3)(a) of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1627: The incentive scheme shall cover only the calendar years 2022 to 2024.