Commercialisation of Air Navigation Service Providers – Evidence from Europe

Abstract

This paper deals with the on-going process of commercialisation of air navigation service providers (ANSPs) with specific focus on Europe. First part offers overview of conducted research on their commercialisation and identifies two main external drivers for the emergence of commercialisation – liberalisation of national markets and demand for other ANS related services. Our research also proposes methodology for numerical assessment of the degree of commercialisation based on the ANSP’s Commercialisation Index (ACI) and presents numerical evaluation of the ACI index of 35 European providers and proposes six different categories of providers reflecting different degree of their commercialisation. Results reveal that 63% of the European ANSPs show signs of commercialisation. On top of that, our outcomes prove that corporatisation cannot be considered a direct manifestation of commercialisation. Despite the most widely accepted view that corporatised providers are commercially active, the findings show that almost 40% of corporatised European ANSPs are not commercially active. The paper also claims that ownership of subsidiaries and joint ventures is the most dominant demonstration of commercialisation. At the same time, our outcomes show that the provision and development of commercial services and products related to ANS are the most common commercial activities of the European ANSPs.