Central Statistical Bureau

Transport and Tourism Statistics Section

 Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia, 1 Lacplesa street, Riga, LV-1301

The statistics on commercial aviation covers scheduled and non-scheduled air traffic at Riga International Airport.

The statistics are compiled and transmitted quarterly to Eurostat by Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (Centrālā statistikas pārvalde) on a monthly basis. The data collection follows the provisions of the following legal acts:

National:

• Law on Statistics
• Cabinet of Ministers, November 30, 2021 Regulations No 782"On the Official Statistics Program 2022-2024"

Data are collected directly from the airlines on the basis of electronic movement messages transmitted to the airport by Riga International Airport. NSI receives aggregated monthly totals in MS Excel files by e-mail every month (T+15). Data are sent based on a monthly report form No 2-Airport "Overview of Aircraft Movement at Airports".

EU:

• Commission Regulation (EC) No 1358/2003 of 31 July 2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 437/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council on statistical returns in respect of the carriage of passengers, freight and mail by air.

Data has been reported starting from 2004 for flight stage and on flight origin destination data; 2001 for airport data.

Dataset A1, B1, C1

The source of information is electronic movement messages transmitted to the airport (SITA messages). The aircraft type, flight information, etc. is provided by the ATC (air traffic control). The source of information is the type of aircraft received from an airline. The information of seats available refers to the technical data. If commercial data are not available the average seat capacity of an aircraft is used.

Dataset A1 and B1- data storage: Data are stored in SQL servers; previous periods are archived and stored separately from current data.

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).

Airports of Latvia with more than 15 000 passenger movement or 15 000 passenger units per year.

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 partially 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 of an aircraft during a flight stage. Includes direct transit passengers (counted upon arrivals and at 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 at 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 of an aircraft during a flight stage. Includes direct transit freight and mail (counted upon arrivals and at 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) No 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).

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

Commercial airports located on the territory of Latvia.

Data has been reported starting from 2004 for flight stage and on flight origin destination data; 2001 for airport data. Transfer passenger data (monthly) available for Riga airport only as from July 2013.

Not applicable.

The units used depend on the variables collected within each data set and are: number of passengers, tonnes, flights, aircraft movements and passenger seats available.

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

Data is collected on a monthly basis for the purpose of data sets A1 and B1 and C1. Reference period is the calendar year 2022.

National level:

• Cabinet of Ministers, November 30, 2021 Regulations No 782"On the Official Statistics Program 2022-2024"

European level: until 2002, the data were provided to Eurostat on a voluntary basis; since 2002 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.

Not applicable.

National level:

•  Statistics Law.

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.

The data provided to Eurostat in the data sets A1, B1 and C1 contain no confidential information.

The procedures with regard to statistical confidentiality follow a Confidentiality Handbook by CSB.

Only airline information data is subject to confidentiality. Before providing the data to Eurostat, the region where they are licensed is coded accordingly either in the European Union (EU) or outside the European Union (non-EU).

The data provided to Eurostat in the data sets A1, B1 and C1 contain no confidential information.

Air transport statistics  are published monthly around 20 days after the reference month.

Release dates are publicly available in the release calendar of CSB.

The release calendar of CSB is publicly available on the CSB website.

Main results of commercial aviation statistics are available free of charge to all users in the CSB public database (monthly, quarterly and annual periodicity).

If the required statistical data are not available in the CSB database or publications (they are not included in official statistics programme),  special requests are accepted.

Air transport statistics are published monthly around 20 days after the reference month.

Release dates are publicly available in the release calendar of CSB.

The main results of air transport statistics are included in a monthly press release.

Annual publication of transport statistics "Transport in Latvia" is available on the CSB website 236 days after the reference year.

Air transport statistics can be found in the CSB database: Transport and Tourism/Transport/Freight traffic or Passenger traffic/Annual or Short term statistics

Not applicable to air transport statistics.

Not applicable

There is metadata description on the CSB website that includes definitions, methods, data collection and comments.

Not applicable

The domain of air transport statistics follows the European Statistics Code of Practice and Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System as far as possible.

CSB has been operating in accordance with the Quality Management System since 2013  that has been developed in accordance with the standard LVS EN ISO 9001: 2009 “Quality Management Systems. Requirements ” and applying a process approach. The quality management system has been designed and implemented with the aim of continuous improvement of the operation of CSB, ensuring the efficient running and management of its processes.

The data are transmitted to Eurostat in the SDMX standard. The datasets have been formatted according to the new structure and sent to Eurostat every quarter for the respective months. The data provider/airport doesn`t send data in the SDMX standard.

The key users of air transport statistics:

• The Ministry of Transport of the Republic of Latvia;
• Tourism industry;
• Transport planning and research companies.

The main variables of interest:

• number of passengers;
• freight and mail or cargo.

Not applicable

All data required by the Regulation are provided, including optional information on transfer passengers.

Additional needs expressed by data users - at the present it is not possible to identify the true origin/destination for passengers travelling via intermediate destinations.

The overall accuracy of the air transport statistics data is good. The processing with several plausibility checks, as well as checks done before transmitting data to Eurostat, provides high accuracy of the data. Comparisons with published data by the airports, as well as mirror checks for national flights, are regularly made and show a high level of comparability.

Not applicable for air transport data collection.

Not applicable

All the statistics required by the provisions of the Regulation 437/2003 are transmitted to Eurostat around 3 months after the reference quarter.

All the statistics required by the provisions of the Regulation 437/2003 are available 2 months before the deadline for the data provisions set up in the legal act.

There are no comparability problems for air transport data geographically as the Regulation ensures high comparability across the EU countries.

Rarely some differences between partner airports have been detected in Eurostat partner airport mirror checks, the inconsistencies have been consulted and explanation provided.

Comparable data are available from 2004 with no break in respective time series.

N/A

As from 2004 data collected and transmitted to Eurostat are consistent.

Not applicable

CSB publishes final data.

Not applicable

Dataset A1 – Data Suppliers (Passengers on board/Freight and mail on board): Airport

Aircraft Information in A1:  The source of information is electronic movement messages transmitted to the airport (SITA messages). The aircraft type, flight information, etc. is provided by the ATC (air traffic control).

Seat information in A1:  The source of information is the type of aircraft received from an airline. The information of seats available refers to the technical data.
If commercial data are not available the average seat capacity of an aircraft is used.

Dataset B1 –Data Suppliers (Passengers carried/Freight and mail loaded/unloaded): Airport

Datasets A1 and B1 - Use of Air Waybill Data as information source of freight data: The airport does not use this source of information. 

Dataset C1 – Bodies that supply the direct transit information to the CNA: The airport supplies information on direct transit passengers to the CNA. The airport is collecting this information from the airline messages (SITA messages). Then the dispatchers put them in AFIPS program, which makes summaries.

Dataset C1 – Bodies that supply the commercial and total aircraft movement to the CNA : The airport supplies information on commercial and total aircraft movement to the CNA. The airport has this information from airline messages. Then the dispatchers put them in AFIPS program and make summaries.

Information needed for the data sets A1, B1 and C1 are collected on a monthly basis from Riga International Airport.

Data (aggregated monthly totals) are received every month (15 days after the reference period) in MS Excel format. 

Data validation procedure :

CSB is responsible for the primary checks regarding the data format. If it is necessary the detected errors are corrected by CSB or by contacting the airport.

Description of consistency checks :

The CSB makes validation of the codes. The other validations are applied to the summary datasets. The validations are the following:

• the total number of seats available is compared with the total number of passengers on board and if necessary corrections are made;
• the particular data coherence between datasets A1, B1 and C1 are verified.

The consistency checks are done manually.

After various plausibility checks, the data received from the airport 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 to CNA uses the codes required in the Regulation. There is no necessity to make any transcodification except the air transport operator code that is encoded by CNA. No problems were encountered using the codes.

Problems on data compilation, validation and delivery: no problems were encountered.

Not applicable for air transport data collection.

Not applicable