How The Airline Crisis Is Affecting Air Traffic Controllers
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The events of 2020, which have unfortunately bled into 2021, have undoubtedly had a tremendous impact on aviation. While we have mainly focused on airlines, airports, as well as the world’s largest planemakers, air traffic controllers have also been negatively affected by travel restrictions and fewer flights.
Much of air traffic control is a fixed cost, meaning that expenditures are more efficient with increased activity. These costs largely remain the same, whether there are 50 or five flights per day. Photo: Getty Images
Case study: NAV Canada
To see how the aviation downturn has affected air navigation service providers, let’s look at Canada’s civil air navigation service – NAV Canada. This entity is one of the largest Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) by total Instrument Flight Rule (IFR) flight hours. Prior to 2020, the group handled 3.3 million flights a year for 40,000 customers in over 18 million square kilometers.