What is the Cost of Closed Airspace?

There are many reasons why airspace can close including but not limited to technical issues with air traffic control, conflicts and natural occurrences such as volcanic activity.

The level of impact of a closure depends on your exposure to the closure and the duration of that closure, the latter often being the uncertain element.

When an aircraft flies between 2 airports, the great circle distance represents the shortest distance between these 2 points and in turn results in the lowest possible fuel consumption and emissions.

Impact

When looking at impact, at the lower end of the scale an airspace closure can mean a flight can still operate, however it must take a slightly longer routing to avoid the closure. This will result in a longer flight time, increased fuel burn and increased emissions. It also means routing through alternative airspace, potentially under the control of a different Air Navigation Service Provider (ANSP) or providers.

As we have previously illustrated in our article What are overflight fees and en-route air navigation charges? the cost for travelling through airspace does vary.

At the opposite end of the scale if either point is within the closed airspace, then the flight will not be able to operate.

Closures impact air navigation service providers, airlines, airports, passengers, air freight and mail as well as impacting businesses such as travel agents, hotels etc. Whilst some of these impacts can be short term and cause an inconvenience, they can also have a greater impact. The current troubles in the Middle East highlights this with airlines and airports unable to operate as normal. This is having a wider economic impact on tourism and ability to conduct business in these areas affected.

For the purposes of this article we are going to look at a theoretical example of an Airbus A320 aircraft flying between London Gatwick and Budapest and we are going to assume Belgian airspace is closed. In the map below, the red line (route 1) shows the great circle routing whereas the other two lines show alternative routings (avoiding Belgian airspace), with one routing above (route 2) and one below (route 3). In this example we are looking specifically at overflight / en-route fees and charges and flight distance only.

Map: London Gatwick to Budapest Example Flight Routings

Chart 1 shows the flight distance in km for each route. Route 1 which represents the great circle routing has a flight distance of 1,461km. Whereas route 2 and route 3 would result in a flight distance 20km and 25km more respectively.

Chart 1: Flight Distance in km

If we now look at the total overflight fees and charges for each route as shown in chart 2, we can see that route 2 has the lowest cost, whereas route 3 has the highest overflight fees and charges.

Chart 2: Overflight Fees and Charges (€)

Summary

As previously mentioned, a longer flight distance will of course result in increased fuel burn and fuel cost and consequently more emissions. The airline/aircraft operators’ number 1 priority will be flight safety and then looking at the most optimum routing in terms of distance flown and economic viability. When looking at the cost of closed airspace from an overflight fees and charges perspective, you need to ascertain the difference between your original flight routing and the most optimum alternative. The output of which will always differ due to country’s airspace you fly through, their charges/tariffs and the distance travelled through each airspace.

With any large airspace closures there will always be winners and losers with one or more Air Navigation Service Providers seeing an increase in traffic whilst others will experience a reduction in traffic.

This article was prepared using En-route charges data and charges calculation app, part of our charges suite of services. Our En-route charges calculator allows customers to easily compare the cost of en-route / overflight fees and charges for any route using any combination of airline and aircraft, while automatically allowing for airspace avoidance.

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