Is U.S. Air Traffic Control More Cost-Effective than Europe’s?
It’s quite likely that with 66 en-route centers (compared to our 20), and fragmented airspace, Europe’s ATC “system” (actually a collection of 38 ANSPs) must be less efficient than ours here in the USA. The new “Performance Review Report, 2008,” released in May by Eurocontrol, provides a wealth of information on the comparative performance of Europe’s ANSPs, as well as one chapter comparing some aspects of U.S. and European ATC performance. Alas, the Europe-US comparison does not extend to cost-effectiveness data. But let’s look at what the data do reveal. One clue that, overall, Europe’s system is less cost-effective is the comparative staffing. While the 38 European ANSPs employ 17,000 controllers, the same as our ATO, total staffing is 56,000 in Europe versus 35,000 in the United States. Even if European unit labor costs are significantly lower, the total cost is almost certainly larger (to control about 55% of the IFR traffic). The United States also has more airspace sectors with
