Annual Monitoring Report RP3 - 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
Share of Union-wide traffic (TSUs) RP3 4.6%
Share of Union-wide en route costs RP3 3.1%
Share en route / terminal costs RP3 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)
▪ Actual IFR movements for Romania grew on average by +1.9% per year between 2019 and 2024.
▪ In the RP3 revised performance plan IFR movements were forecasted to remain stable (-0.2% per year). Planned traffic was in line with the STATFOR June 2022 base forecast.
▪ Portugal reached the 2019 pre-pandemic traffic level in 2023.
▪ Actual en route service units for Romania grew on average by +4.5% per year between 2019 and 2024.
▪ Actual service units grew faster than planned in the RP3 revised performance plan (+2.6% per year). Planned traffic was in line with the STATFOR June 2022 base forecast.
▪ A total of 22,175K actual service units were recorded over RP3, +5.3% above the aggregated planned value (21,055K).
Safety (Main ANSP)
▪ ROMATSA achieved the RP3 target maturity levels in 2021 but recorded a degrading performance between 2022 and 2023 falling below the target levels. The measures implemented enabled ROMATSA to recover and achieve the RP3 target levels.
▪ Romania recorded stable performance with respect to safety occurrences, with no runway incursions in 2024, and the same rate of separation minima infringements compared to 2023.
Environment (Member State)
▪ Environmental performance in Romania deteriorated during RP3. KEA increased from 2.17% in 2020 to 3.77% in 2024.
▪ Romania didn´t achieve the KEA target in any year of RP3.
▪ The NSA noted that the main factors contributed to KEA deteriorating during the period were neighbouring airspace unavailability due to conflict zones, upstream or downstream of ATM network inefficiencies, and airspace users’ preferences.
▪ KEP deteriorated from 3.36% to 4.06% and SCR deteriorated from 2.17% to 4.00% during RP3.
▪ The share of CDO flights deteriorated from 47.00% to 42.90% during RP3.
▪ Additional taxi out time deteriorated from 1.95 to 2.24 min/flight, while additional time in terminal airspace improved from 0.74 to 0.66 min/flight during RP3.
Capacity (Member State)
▪ Romania accumulated a total of 225,928 en-route ATFM delay minutes within the RP3 timeframe, reaching the highest level of total delay minutes generated in 2023. During RP3, Romania accounted for 0.41% of the total delays at Union level. Compared to RP2, total delay minutes increased by 15%.
▪ Romania met its en-route ATFM delay targets in 2020, 2021 and 2022, and failed to meet them in 2023 and 2024.
▪ In RP3, the main driver of en-route ATFM delays in Romania was Weather, accounting for 100% of total delay minutes.
▪ Over RP3, 49% of delayed flights in Romania experienced delays longer than 15 minutes, representing an increase of 4 percentage points compared to RP2.
▪ In Romania, the total number of ATCOs in OPS over the RP3 period increased by 19 FTEs, representing an 8% increase compared to 2019. Romania fell short of the planned ATCO numbers by 11 FTEs by the end of RP3.
▪ Romania accumulated a total of 7,907 arrival ATFM delay minutes within the RP3 timeframe, reaching the highest level of total delay minutes generated in 2024. Compared to RP2, total terminal delay minutes decreased by 85%.
▪ In RP3, the leading drivers of arrival ATFM delays in Romania were other non-ATC related causes and Weather, representing 81% and 19% of total delay minutes.
Cost-efficiency (En route/Terminal charging zone(s))
▪ Throughout RP3, the en route actual unit costs of Romania were lower than the determined unit costs, except for the combined year 2020-2021. This was mainly due to traffic being higher than expected after 2021.
▪ The en route actual total costs for RP3 (928M€2017) were higher than determined (by +8.3M€2017, or +0.9%). The difference in total costs is mainly driven by higher staff costs (24M€2017, or +3.6%) recorded by ROMATSA. Staff costs over the RP3 period were higher than determined, mainly due to increased pension costs and inflation-related compensation. These were further impacted by non-recurring payments linked to higher than planned traffic and performance achievements.
▪ The total RP3 en route regulatory result for ROMATSA amounted to 58M€. This is +26M higher than the ex-ante regulatory result. The difference is mainly attributable to the positive inflation adjustment due to higher than planned inflation, compensated by a negative difference between determined and actual costs to be borne by the ANSP. The regulatory result amounted to 5.5% of the total planned en route revenues, while the ex-ante regulatory result amounted to 3.2% of the total planned en route revenues.
▪ Throughout the RP3 period, the terminal actual unit costs of Romania were higher than the determined unit costs. This was mainly because traffic levels were lower than expected, except in 2024 when traffic was higher, but the effect was offset by total costs that were higher than planned.
▪ The terminal actual total costs for RP3 (91M€2017) were higher than determined (by +3.3M€2017, or +3.8%). The difference in total costs is mainly driven by higher staff costs (3.4M€2017, or +5.0%) recorded by ROMATSA. Staff costs over the RP3 period were higher than determined, mainly due to increased pension obligations and inflation-related compensation.
▪ The total RP3 terminal regulatory result for ROMATSA amounted to -2.2M€. The loss is mainly attributable to the negative difference between determined and actual costs to be borne by the ANSP.