Europe’s Airspace is creaking at the seams. Urgent action required to improve flight punctuality

On-time performance of flights in Europe dramatically deteriorated during the last week of June and continues to struggle despite the best efforts of airlines. Reduced ATC capacity and inadequate coordination between ANSPs, Eurocontrol’s Network Manager and airlines has made the effects of a recent spate of bad weather worse than necessary.

A4E members alone suffered just under 900,000 minutes worth of delay from 26-30 June affecting over 36,000 flights.* This represents an average of over 5,000 delayed flights a day or over 200 delayed flights an hour, affecting approximately six million passengers. ATC related delays accounted for nearly one quarter of these delays.

ATC services in Europe continue to underperform as confirmed by the recently released Performance Review Report (PRR) from Eurocontrol. This showed that over a quarter of flights did not arrive within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time in 2023. En-route Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) delays in 2023 were also the second highest over the past 20 years and beat the figure for 2019 which had a higher level of air traffic.

In order to avoid a repeat of the past week, A4E is calling on the European Commission to ensure centralised coordination of European weather services for aviation and to implement a functional framework for cross-border coordination and planning between Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs), the Eurocontrol Network Manager and airlines. A4E continues to call for a more robust performance management framework for European airspace that holds ANSPs and member states to account for not achieving targets. These measures are crucial for improving efficiency, minimising delays and enabling airlines to deliver a timely and efficient service to their passengers.

Reflecting on the past week, Ourania Georgoutsakou, Managing Director of A4E said, “At the busiest time of the year for air travel, ATC is still the cause of nearly a quarter of flight delays in Europe making a difficult situation worse. Everyone needs to be at the top of their game to deal with challenging scenarios and it is clear that Europe’s ATC services are still far off from where they need to be.”

“Europe urgently needs a framework that ensures effective coordination between ANSPs, airlines and Eurocontrol to better plan and prepare and to match airspace capacity with demand. This will put airlines in the best position possible to deliver the timely service passengers expect and deserve.”

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