STATISTICAL OFFICE OF THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC

BUSINESS STATISTICS SECTION

CROSS-SECTIONAL STATISTICS DEPARTMENT

STATISTICAL OFFICE OF THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC

LAMACSKA CESTA 3/C

840 05 BRATISLAVA 45

SLOVAKIA

The data provide users with information on commercial aviation statistics in Slovakia. Commercial Aviation includes:

• regular and irregular air transport,
• national and international transport,
• passenger, freight and mail transport.

These data are the result of the processing of the monthly statistical survey on airports (Dop 4-12), which includes 6 international airports in the Slovak Republic. Monthly, this report is submitted by Bratislava, Košice, Poprad-Tatry, Sliač and Žilina and Piešťany airports annually. Data to EUROSTAT are also sent in the same periodicity.

Data collection is based on Regulation (EC) N°1358/2003, implementing Regulation N°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.

Three data sets required by the Regulation – A1, B1 and C1 – are provided to Eurostat:

• Dataset A1 - Flight Stage dataset : periodic flight stage data registered for airport-to-airport routes, and broken down by arrivals/departures, scheduled/non-scheduled, passenger service/all-freight and mail service, airline information and aircraft type. The values provided concern passengers on board, freight and mail on board, commercial air flights as well as passenger seats available.
• Dataset B1 - On Flight Origin/Destination dataset : periodic on flight origin/destination data registered for airport-to-airport routes, and broken down by arrivals/departures, scheduled/non scheduled, passenger service/all-freight and mail service and airline information. The values provided concern passengers carried and freight and mail loaded or unloaded.
• Dataset C1 - Airport dataset: periodic airport data registered for declaring airports, and broken down by airline information. The values provided concern total passengers carried, total direct transit passengers, total transfer (indirect transit) passengers (optional variable), total freight and mail loaded or unloaded, total commercial aircraft movements and total aircraft movements.

Data sets A1 and B1 are provided on monthly basis, while data set C1 is provided on annual basis including the optional variable - total number of transfer passengers.

Some additional information is provided in the Country Specific Notes (CSNs) available at Eurostat’s metadata page (in Annex part).

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).

All commercial airports in the territory of the Slovak Republic with traffic in excess of 15 000 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).

All commercial airports located on the territory of the Slovak Republic with traffic in excess of 15 000 passenger units annually.

All data sets have been provided according to the legal act (with no derogations) starting from 2005 reference year.

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.

According to the legal act the weight of freight and mail is transmitted in tonnes with three decimal places.

Reference period is the calendar year.

National level:

•  The Programme of State Statistical Surveys

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:

• Protection of statistical confidentiality (protection of confidential statistical data) is a system of interrelated measures in the legislative, methodological, organizational, technical, security and personnel fields, preventing the leakage of confidential statistical data or the premature publication of statistical information. Authorities performing state statistics are obliged to ensure the protection of confidential statistical data from misuse in the manner set out in § 25a and § 29 and 30 of Act No. 540/2001 Coll. on State Statistics, as amended. The principles of the application of confidential statistical data protection are available on the website of the SO SR at: https://slovak.statistics.sk/wps/portal/ext/services/infoservis/confidential

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 folllows the Handbook on Statistical Disclosure Control (2010).

Only the airline information data is subject to confidentiality. Before 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).

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

Data confidentiality problems: Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic do not have problem with confidential data.

Air transport statistics is published at national level annually. 

not available

not available

Air transport statistics are published monthly 120 days (four months) after the reference month with being preliminary until publishing the annual results.

not available

Yearbook of transport, posts and telecommunication

Databases

Not applicable to air transport statistics.

not available

Not available at national level. The data collection follows entirely the povisiosn of the Regulation.

not available

The SO SR has a quality management system in place. The Quality Manual includes a description of the quality management system and the fulfillment of ISO 9001 requirements. The application of the Manual ensures that all activities that affect the quality of the products being produced are planned, managed, reviewed, evaluated and meet the requirements accepted in the order. The Quality Guide is available at:

https://slovak.statistics.sk/wps/portal/ext/aboutus/key.documents/quality.declaration

The basis of the whole quality management system is the Code of Practice for European Statistics:

https://slovak.statistics.sk/wps/portal/ext/aboutus/key.documents/code.of.practise

Data quality can be assessed as high. There is a set of validation rules and quality checks put in place, which detect various types of issues. In case of any issues detected, the data providers are contacted to provide explanations or/and revise the data accordingly. Mirror checks (for national transport) and checks for the consistency over times are prepared and revised as well and the results are compared with the data published by the airports at their website.

Annually, Eurostat provides a data quality report with a summary of the main findings affecting quality as well as showing the solution adopted and the materiality of the existing differences. Mirror checks and checks for the consistency over times are prepared as well.

The key users of air transport statistics collected according to the Regulation 437/2003 are:

• Ministry of Transport and Construction of the Slovak Republic
• Universities and research institutions
• Users involved in the aviation industry (e.g. airlines, airports)

Data of commercial aircraft movements, the routes, numbers of passengers, amount of transported freight and mail as well as seats available provides an important basis for decision-making of politics, society and economy in the context of the development and promotion of transport projects.

Since 2009, the Statistical Office of the SR has been conducting customer satisfaction surveys with its products and services at two-year intervals. The aim of the surveys is to get information about the interest and opinions of users on providing and quality of statistical products and services. The information obtained is a valuable source for the further activities of the SO SR. The result of the satisfaction survey in 2017 is available on the website of the SO SR at (only in slovak language):

https://slovak.statistics.sk/wps/portal/ext/aboutus/marketing/survey.of.satisfaction

The data collection on air transport statistics follows the provisions of the Regulation 437/2003. All variables in all three data sets are provided including the voluntary variable – transfer passenger.

Some additional information is provided in the Country Specific Notes (CSNs) available at Eurostat’s metadata page (in Annex part).

Within the current data collection, it is not possible to identify true first origin/final destination, when the journey include multiple flights.

The SO SR makes great efforts to prevent the occurrence of errors in data and performs a thorough verification of data to detect errors.

Not applicable for air transport data collection.

To avoid non-selectable errors, i. errors in the process of collection and processing The SO SR has integrated logical and data controls in the integrated statistical information system (IŠIS) at the level of micro-data as well as at the level of aggregated data that are performed during data collection and processing.

The electronic questionnaire itself provides many arithmetic and logical controls between variables that we distinguish between serious and informative. In the event of serious errors in the form, this is not accepted and, in consultation with the reporting agent, is corrected to be correct and entered into processing. With these tools we try to minimize errors already in the collection itself and then during data processing.

All the statistics required by the provisions of the Regulation 437/2003 are transmitted to Eurostat 4 months after the reference quarter.

Difficulties to respect deadline for data transmission: The deadline for the transmission of data to Eurostat T+6 months shorter reference period is not a problem.

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 problems of comparability for air transport data collection with a very high data comparability across countries due to the common legal basis. Comparison of the data regarding passengers and freight/mail declared by partner reporting airports (so-called mirror checks) by Eurostat allow further the detection of possible inconsistencies which can be corrected if possible.

As from 2002 the statistics on air transport are comparable over time, as they are collected following fully the provisions of the legal act - the Regulation 437/2003. Time series checks are regularly made to detect inconsistencies in the data.

Time series breaks occur in case of airport being closed temporarily (for maintenance, reconstructions, etc.). The detailed information on eventual breaks in the time series is provided in the Country Specific Notes (CSNs) available at Eurostat’s metadata page (in Annex part).

Comparisons with other transport statistics are only partially and to a limited extent possible with regard to freight transport and passenger transport, since data are currently not available or are not collected at the same level of detail and also different methods and underlying objectives.

There are no deviations, statistical outputs are internally consistent.

It is estimated on the basis of the reporting unit of the time required to complete the form.

The revision policy governs the basic rules and general procedures by which the pre-drafted data is later revised as well as applied in revisions for other reasons. The revision policy and calendar is available on the SO SR website at:

 https://slovak.statistics.sk/wps/portal/ext/products/revisions

The policy described in 17.1 is fully implemented.

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

Aircraft Information in A1:

• Message - strips traffic control
  Airport dispatching and matriculation of aircraft

Seats information information in A1:  The original source of information for reporting the seats available are Manual, aircraft database.

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

Datasets A1 and B1 - Use of Air Waybill Data as information source of freight data:  Airports

Dataset C1 – Bodies that supply the direct transit information to the CNA:  The direct transit passenger information is from Stowing, which make out the voucher for aircraft.

Dataset C1 – Bodies that supply the commercial and total aircraft movement to the CNA: The commercial and total aircraft movement information are: Aircraft dispatching, Flight plan, Handling agent. Database of airport.

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

Dataset A1 – Data supplier’s information sources( Passengers on board/ Freight and mail on board): The original information sources are:

• Airport – database of individual flights
• Airport handling

Dataset A1 – Data transmission to CNA – level of aggregation, system and periodicity (Passengers on board/ Freight and mail on board):

• Level of aggregation → Individual flight level - monthly
  Transmission system → excel file - monthly

Dataset B1 – Data supplier’s information sources (Passengers carried/ Freight and mail loaded/unloaded): The original information sources are:

• Airport – database of individual flights
• Airport handling

Dataset B1 – Data transmission to CNA – level of aggregation, system and periodicity(Passengers carried/ Freight and mail loaded/unloaded):

• Level of aggregation → Individual flight level - monthly
  Transmission system → excel file via - monthly

Datasets A1 and B1 - OFOD data derived from FS data or collected separately by the data supplier:  OFOD data are derived from FS data.

Implementation of the data collection and compilation process: Collection of data is made according to CR 437/2003 by monthly survey of airport  The changes in the survey are not needed.

Data validation procedure :

• CNA make the control between the data in files A1, B1, C1.
  Eventually errors are consulted with airport.
  If the number of passengers including infant on the board is higher than capacity of aircraft, the number of passenger must be physically corrected.

Description of consistency checks: No information available.

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 airports use the codes requested in the Regulation.

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

Not applicable for air transport data collection.

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