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).

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.

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 without decimal places.

Reference period is the calendar year 2020.

National level:

•  The Air Transport survey is included in National Statistical Programme yearly approved by a Republic Presidential decree. Code: IST-00145

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:

Several national legal acts guarantee the confidentiality of data requested for statistical purposes. In Italy, according to art. 9, paragraph 1 of the Legislative Decree n. 322 of 1989 (concerning the statistical system), statistical data cannot be disseminated but in aggregated form, in order to make it impossible to identify the person to whom the information relates. The data collected can only be used for statistical purposes.

Official statistics must also safeguard the rights, basic freedoms, and dignity of respondents, in particular with regard to the right of confidentiality and personal identity.

Istat assures the protection of personal data according to the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, repealing Directive 95/46/EC) and, as national legislation, Italian Data Protection Code (Legislative Decree no. 196/2003) and Code of conduct and professional practice applying to the processing of personal data for statistical and scientific research purposes within the framework of the national statistical system.

In order to make statistical secrecy and protection of personal data effective, Istat is currently taking appropriate organizational, logistical, methodological and statistical measures in accordance with internationally established standards.

Moreover, Legislative Decree n. 322 of 1989, art. 6 and 6 bis provides that the exchange of microdata and personal data within the National Statistical System (Sistan) is possible if it is necessary to fulfil requirements provided by the National Statistical Programme.

Finally, in implementation of art. 5-ter of the legislative decree 14 March 2013, no. 33, the new "Guidelines for the access for scientific purposes to the elementary data of the National Statistical System" establish the conditions under which the bodies and offices of the National Statistical System can allow researchers to access their own elementary data for scientific purposes.

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: 

There are some confidentiality problems about the airlines.

Every year, in December, ISTAT publishes a release calendar providing the exact dates for press releases for the coming year. The calendar is distributed to the press and is available free of charge to interested parties. Statistical information is published in accordance with an approved release calendar.

Press releases are issued according to a calendar. The calendar is available on the website (https://www.istat.it/en/information-and-services/journalists/press-releases-/press-calendar)

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

Not applicable to air transport statistics.

Since the 90s Istat has adopted a systematic approach to ensure the quality of statistical information and of its services to the community (see the Work done).

With the aim of strengthening the commitment to quality, in 2020 Istat set up the Quality Committee, for overseeing all quality initiatives in the Statistical Institute. In addition the role of Quality Manager was formally established.

In 2021 a new quality policy for statistical production was adopted. It is consistent with the European quality framework developed by Eurostat, and transposes its main principles and definitions.

For details: https://www.istat.it/en/organisation-and-activity/institutional-activities/quality-commitment

 Implementation and compliance with the SDMX standards: 

 Yes we use SDMX Converter.

 Datasets A1 and B1- possibility to identify the true first origin/ final destination of a passenger:

They are included in dataset B1, since 2019 data.

Not applicable for air transport data collection.

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: 

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.

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

Aircraft Information in A1:  Airports

Seats information information in A1:  technical data from airports

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

Datasets A1 and B1 - Use of Air Waybill Data as information source of freight data: NO

Dataset C1 – Bodies that supply the direct transit information to the CNA: Airports

Dataset C1 – Bodies that supply the commercial and total aircraft movement to the CNA: Airports

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

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

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

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

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

Airports transmit all data to Istat by uploading datasets on ARCAM, a System for the collection (upload) of administrative archives and survey data

Data validation procedure :

• Interactive corrections (wrong codes…)
• Consistency between Arr and Dep
• Comparison between dataset A1, B1 and C1 etc.

Description of consistency checks:

• No information avaiable. 

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: It’s often necessary to undertake transcodification.

Problems on data compilation, validation and delivery:

• There are several problems due to wrong data transmitted from airports.

Not applicable for air transport data collection.

There would be some problems to transmit on t+3 (dataset A1, B1,C1).