Ministry of Transport

Department for Strategy

Nábřeží Ludvíka Svobody 1222/12

110 00 Praha 1

Czech Republic

CZ reports to Eurostat according to the relevant EU Regulation aviation data for 5 airports: Prague, Karlovy Vary, Brno – Tuřany, Ostrava – Mošnov and Pardubice. All the official data collection in the Czech Republic is carried out according to the CZ legal act: Act No. 89/1995 Coll., on the State Statistical Service, as amended. According to this legal act, respondents are obliged to provide required data. The aviation data are collected by the Ministry of Transport of the Czech Republic, processed on monthly basis (for all the reporting airports) and transmitted to Eurostat.

Datasets A1, B1 and C1 are provided to Eurostat. Transfer passengers are provided for Prague airport. Data include also infants in arms.

Airports are classified according to ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) airport coded as listed in ICAO document 7910.

Aircrafts are classified according to aggregated aircraft categories based on the ICAO aircraft codes as listed in ICAO document 8643.

Airlines are classified according to the ICAO airline codes as listed in the ICAO document 8585. When providing the data to Eurostat, the region where they are licensed is coded accordingly either as European Union (EU) or outside the European Union (non-EU).

Commercial air services and civil aircraft movements covering airports exceeding 15000 passenger units annually.

The main concepts used in this domain are the following:

Community airport - a defined area on land or water in a Member State subject to the provisions of the treaty, which is intended to be used either wholly or in part for the arrival, departure and surface movement of aircraft and open for commercial air services.

Flight stage - the operation of an aircraft from take-off to its next landing. This is linked to the definition of passengers (or freight and mail) on board.

Passengers on board - all passengers on board of the aircraft upon landing at the reporting airport or at taking off from the reporting airport. All revenue and non-revenue passengers on board an aircraft during a flight stage. Includes direct transit passengers (counted at arrivals and departures).

Direct transit passengers - passengers who, after a short stop, continue their journey on the same aircraft on a flight having the same flight number as the flight on which they arrive.

Transfer of indirect transit passengers - passengers arriving and departing on a different aircraft within 24 hours, or on the same aircraft bearing different flight numbers. They are counted twice: once upon arrival and once on departure.

Freight and mail on board - all freight and mail on board of the aircraft upon landing at the reporting airport or at taking off from the reporting airport. All freight and mail on board an aircraft during a flight stage. Includes direct transit freight and mail (counted at arrivals and departures). Includes express services and diplomatic bags. Excludes passenger baggage.

On flight origin and destination - traffic on a commercial air service identified by a unique flight number subdivided by airport pairs in accordance with point of embarkation and point of disembarkation on that flight. For passengers, freight or mail where the airport of embarkation is not known, the aircraft origin should be deemed to be the point of embarkation; similarly, if the airport of disembarkation is not known, the aircraft destination should be deemed to be the point of disembarkation. This is linked to the definition of passengers carried and freight and mail loaded or unloaded.

Passengers carried - all passengers on a specific flight (with one flight number) counted once only and not repeatedly on each individual stage of that flight. All revenue and non-revenue passengers whose journey begin or terminates at the reporting airport and transfer passengers joining or leaving the flight at the reporting airport. Excludes direct transit passengers.

Freight and mail loaded or unloaded - all freight and mail loaded onto or unloaded from an aircraft. Includes express services and diplomatic bags. Excludes passenger baggage. Excludes direct transit freight and mail.

Passenger unit - one passenger unit is equivalent to either one passenger or 100 kilograms of freight and mail.

The data are collected at individual airport level.

Four categories of Community airports are defined by the Regulation (EC) N°1358/2003:

• Category "0": Airports with less than 15 000 passenger units per year are considered as having only "occasional commercial traffic" without obligation to report.
• Category "1": Airports with between 15 000 and 150 000 passenger units per year shall transmit only aggregated airport data (Data set C).
• Category "2": Airports with more than 150 000 passenger units and less than 1 500 000 passenger units per year shall transmit flight stage data, on flight origin destination data as well as aggregated airport data (Data sets A, B and C).
• Category "3": Airports with at least 1 500 000 passenger units per year shall transmit flight stage data, on flight origin destination data as well as aggregated airport data (Data sets A, B and C).

Airports under category ‘0’ are not included in the statistics provided to Eurostat.

All airports with commercial air traffic located on the CZ territory exceeding 15000 passenger units annually

All datasets have been provided according to the EU legal act since 2004 (when the Czech Republic joined the EU).

Not applicable.

The units used depend on the variables collected within each data set and are: number of passengers, kilogrammes (for freight and mail), aircraft movements and passenger seats available.

The weight of freight and mail is transmitted in tonnes with three decimal places.

Reference period is the calendar year 2022.

National level:

According to the above mentioned legal act, every year the Czech Statistical Office in cooperation with the Ministries prepares a Program for statistical data collection in order to collect data and compile statistics for national as well as international purposes. After this, the Program is approved by the government, all the respondents concerned are obliged to report to the Czech Statistical Office or to the relevant Ministry.

European level:  since 2004 data provision is based on an EP and Council framework legal act and on several implementing Commission Regulations:

• Regulation (EC) No 437/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 February 2003 on statistical returns in respect of the carriage of passengers, freight and mail by air.
• Commission Regulation (EC) No 1358/2003 of 31/07/2003.
• Commission Regulation No 546/2005 of 8 April 2005.
• Commission Regulation No 158/2007 of 16 February 2007.

Some data (annual and quareterly) on passenger and freight transport are available partially for the years 2002-2003.

Not applicable.

National level

•  Act No. 89/1995 Coll., on the State Statistical Service, as amended.

European level:

• Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

Data confidentiality problems: 

According to the Czech legal base, data on an individual enterprise or data from which this information can be easily obtained cannot be published or otherwise disseminated.

In practice it means that only aggregated data based on the data from at least 3 reporting units can be published. Because flight stages and on flight origin/destination data might include these sensitive information, CZ requested officially Eurostat not to publish it.  However at present the Ministry of Transport started to negotiate with the Prague airport in order to get permission to release the data for dissemination.

Basic indicators on air transport statistics are published on quarterly basis approximately 3 months after the reference period, data are considered provisional until publishing the annual results. The final annual results are available usually in July next year.

Not available.

Main results are published at the Ministry of Transport´s website and are available to all users, more detailed information which are not considered confidential are available upon request.

Air transport statistics data are published on quarterly basis and then final results annually.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable to air transport statistics.

Not applicable.

Not available.

Not available

Before publishing data and transmitting them to Eurostat there are quality checks and in case of any problems or unclearness data providers are contacted for further explanation.

Data quality can be assesed as high.

Implementation and compliance with the SDMX standards: Ministry of Transport regularly sends the data files in SDMX format via eDamis portal.

Data files A1, B1 and C1 in CSV format are generated and then the SDMX converter is used.  Data exchange between the Ministry of Transport and the airports is in the CSV format

As aviation data are mostly available in time, are precise, detailed breakdown is available, users are satisfied.  Sometimes problems arise due to confidentiality, when the Ministry of Transport cannot provide requested data.

The data collection on air transport statistics is in compliance with the Regulation 437/2003.  All variables in all three data sets are provided including the voluntary variable - transfer passengers for the Prague airport.

Not applicable for air transport data collection.

All the statistics required by the provisions of the Regulation 437/2003 are transmitted to Eurostat within the regularoty framewrok.

All the statistics required by the provisions of the Regulation 437/2003 are usually available before the deadline for the data provisions set up in the legal act (mostlywith T+5 month). 

Due to confidentiality reasons CZ airports cannot be included in the mirror checks exercise done by Eurostat.

As from 2004 air transport statistical data transmitted to Eurostat are comparable over time, methodology follows the provisions of the Regulation 437/2003.

Comparison with other transport mode statistics is possible only to a limited extent as the methodology (data collected) differ in many ways.  E.g. number of passengers using air transport in the CZ (meaning on the CZ territory) can be compared to number of passengers using rail or bus transport. More detailed comparison is difficult also due to the fact that some breakdown in passenger transport data for other transport modes is not available. 

Data are consistent.

Response burden is put on the airport. Due to the national statistical act, costs have to be covered by a reporting unit.

The data on aviation are published quarterly, data are considered provisional until publishing the annual results, therefore data are revised, if necessary, annually. 

In aviation statistics data revision is not very frequent issue.

The air transport statistical data are collected from the airports (5 airports).

Information needed for the datasets A1, B1 and C1 are collected on monthly basis from all reporting airports.

Dataset B1 – Data supplier’s information sources (Passengers carried/ Freight and mail loaded/unloaded): The airports use their own information databases which are supported by handling agents’ data.

Dataset B1 – Data transmission to CNA – level of aggregation, system and periodicity (Passengers carried/ Freight and mail loaded/unloaded): Monthly totals, transmitted by e-mail on monthly basis.

Datasets A1 and B1 - OFOD data derived from FS data or collected separately by the data supplier: Handling agents supply this information to the airports and then the airports transmit it to CNA.

Dataset C1 – Data supplier’s information sources (Passengers carried/ Freight and mail loaded/unloaded): The airports use their own information databases which are supported by handling agents’ data.

Dataset C1 – Data transmission to CNA – level of aggregation, system and periodicity (Passengers carried/ Freight and mail loaded/unloaded): Monthly totals, transmitted by e-mail on monthly basis.

Data validation procedure:

After uploadiung received data into the database the first step of validation process takes place. iI includes namely checks of format and possible duplications and then comparison with a previous period (consistency over time) and in case of  a problem, the relevant airport is contacted for further explanation.

Ministry of Transport uses the validation procedure within eDamis tool. Usually there are no significant errors detected only if there are new airport, airline or airplane codes used by reporting airports, which are not yet in the list of codes used by Eurostat.

Description of consistency checks: Consistency checks described in the article  2.1.5. of  Reference Manual on Air Transport Statistics, Version 11 are used.

After various plausibility checks, the data received from the airports are compiled into monthly data following the structure of the data sets which are preset by regulation (EC) 1358/2003.

Data codification practices:

The information supplied by the Czech airports to the Ministry of Transport use the same ICAO codification as requested by Eurostat. There are no problems with using the codes specified in the Regulation.

Occasionally there are some problems with the list of codes specified in the regulation due to quite long periodicity of updating these codes.

Problems on data compilation, validation and delivery: No problem encountered.

Not applicable for air transport data collection.

Not applicable.