Suchergebnisse

Airspace fragmentation represents an issue that began to be more frequently mentioned within the Air Traffic Management (ATM) domain in the last two decades. Primarily, it is frequently listed as one of the main causes contributing to inefficiency of the ATM system in Europe. However, even though the issue of the European airspace fragmentation has been recognized back in the 1990s, over the past decades it has neither been frequently studied nor comprehensively addressed. Accordingly, minor progress has been made to describe this issue in more depth. Therefore, this research paper deals with the research of performance-based airspace fragmentation (one of several European airspace fragmentation types). It presents the conceptual and methodological framework of a novel model that can be used to obtain answers to hypothetical questions of where, when, how, and whether it is possible to achieve performance-based airspace defragmentation. Accordingly, it is expected that further studies of the developed model will deliver relevant information that may contribute to a more inclusive, smart, and spatially oriented development of the ATM system in Europe.

When it comes to discussion about the efficiency of the Air Traffic Management (ATM) system in Europe, European airspace fragmentation is frequently mentioned as a barrier limiting further efficiency improvement of the ATM system. Thereby, European airspace fragmentation can be studied from multiple different aspects. It can be analyzed from organizational, operational, technical, functional or performance-based aspects. All this fragmentation aspects have their pros and cons. For example, from an operational aspect, fragmenting airspace into smaller patterns (sectors) is normal operational practice (performed in order to adjust demand with capacity), while from a performance-based aspect highly fragmented airspace is not preferred. In spite of, the European airspace fragmentation is mainly considered as the negative feature. By analyzing the situation from 1998 till 2020 this paper aims to answer the research question of whether and how European airspace is fragmented from the cost-efficiency aspect. Thereby, the research is based on the examination of the spatiotemporal autocorrelation structures of the European airspace. After their determination, their spatial and temporal variability level was also studied. As research findings indicate that, from a performance-based aspect, fragmentation of European airspace is dynamic and heterogeneous in both space and time, they were placed in a wider context. Accordingly, the genesis of cost-efficiency-based European airspace fragmentation is placed in the context of the conceptual framework of currently applicable strategic planning practice whereby their causal relationship was identified.