National Performance Plan (NPP) for Air Navigation Services
This page provides details on the SE Performance Scheme and the UK National Performance Plan (NPP) for ATM/Air Navigation Services (ANS)
Background
The Performance Scheme aims to improve the performance of European ANS by establishing targets at the EU-level and committing Member States to adopt consistent targets at the national or Functional Airspace Block (FAB) level. The Scheme was introduced through amendment to the SES high-level legislation (SES II), supplemented through the adoption of a Performance regulation and amendment to the Charging regulation. The European Commission (EC) appointed EUROCONTROL to act as an independent Performance Review Body (PRB) to advise it on the development and implementation of the Scheme. There are four Key Performance Areas (KPAs): safety; the environment; capacity (delay); and cost-efficiency. The first reference period focuses on the en route environment only and sets EU-wide targets for the the environment, capacity and cost-efficiency KPAs; with national/FAB targets only required for the latter two – the environment target will be addressed at the network level for reference period 1. In the second reference period, it is expected that targets will be established at both the en route, terminal and airport level and for all four KPAs.
Reference Period 1 (RP1), 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2014
The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), as the UK national supervisory authority (NSA), drafted the National Performance Plan (NPP) for RP1, which was adopted by the Department for Transport (DfT) and submitted to the European Commission (EC) on 30 June 2011.
Following detailed assessment by the PRB, the EC issued a Recommendation requesting that a number of States review their RP1 targets on 19 November 2011.
The CAA drafted and addendum to the NPP, which was adopted by the DfT and submitted to the EC on 19 December 2011.
Following further assessment, the PRB recommended to the EC in April 2012 that Member States revised Plans and targets should be accepted for RP1.
At the Single Sky Committee in June, the EC accepted the PRB assessment individually notified Member States that their Plans had been accepted. The EC also issued a further Recommendation related to RP1, which was published at the end of July 2012.
Reference Period 2 (RP2), 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2019
In preparation for RP2, the PRB issued a Regulatory Approach document outlining options and proposals for amending the Performance Scheme for RP2, which was consulted upon through the EC consultation mechanism in spring 2012.
The NSAs of the UK and Ireland FAB (UK-IE FAB) submitted a detailed joint response to the RP2 Regulatory Approach consultation on 11 May 2012, accompanied by a letter to the Chairman of the PRB.
On 13 July the CAA launched a consultation on its process for developing economic regulation for RP2 in order to elicit stakeholders' views on how to best design the process for developing the RP2 Performance Plan. The consultation closed on 28 September 2012. A process update was published in Aprl 2013, containing a mandate for customer consultation between NERL and airspace users.
On 16 July, the NSAs of the UK-Ireland FAB jointly sponsored a symposium to develop understanding of the concept of total economic value (TEV) for assessing local performance plans for RP2 - a concept proposed in the PRB regulatory approach consultation. The slides and associated documentation are available below.
At the Single Sky Committee on 15/16 October 2012, the Commission presented its initial proposals to amend the Performance and Charging regulations, in preparation for RP2 of the Performance Scheme. The proposed amendments were discussed at a series of SSC workshops and full Commitee meetings and revised regulations were finally adopted on 8 March 2013 and then published in the Official Journal of the EU on 9 May 2013.
The Performance Scheme for RP1 provides for Member States to submit Plans at either the national or FAB level. Where Member States provided national plans, they were required to also submit aggregated FAB targets. In RP2 FAB Performance Plans will be mandatory.
