European air traffic delays ‘more than double’ in a decade

Air traffic control delays in Europe have more than doubled over the past decade, far outpacing growth in flight numbers and causing increasing disruption for passengers, according to a report released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

Between 2015 and 2024, Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) delays rose by 114 per cent, while flight numbers increased by just 6.7 per cent over the same period.

The analysis excludes delays caused by weather, as well as flight cancellations resulting from air traffic control strikes.

Despite the relatively modest growth in traffic, IATA said capacity limitations and staffing shortages have continued to weigh heavily on the system, problems that have been known for years but insufficiently addressed.

In particular, the air navigation service providers (ANSPs) of France and Germany account for more than 50 per cent of all ATC-related delays across Europe.

Against this backdrop, IATA Director General Willie Walsh said Europe was now experiencing the consequences of its long-standing failure to reform air traffic control.

“We’re now seeing the consequences of Europe’s failure to get a grip on air traffic control,” Walsh said.

While a small improvement is expected in 2025, he said this would follow “a very bad 2024” and would not reverse the deterioration seen over the past decade.

He said airlines and passengers had been promised a Single European Sky that would cut delays and reduce fuel burn through more efficient navigation and routing.

Instead, he said, delays had more than doubled, forcing airlines to adjust schedules to accommodate inefficiency and weakening Europe’s connectivity and competitiveness.

“While Eurocrats debate ways to increase the burden of EU261 passenger compensation, the root cause of much of the delay suffered by travelers, air traffic control, escapes without action or censure,” Walsh said.

The scale of the problem is reflected in the data. According to the report, 7.2 million flights were delayed between 2015 and October 2025. Of these, 6.4 million were delayed by up to 30 minutes, while around 700,000 experienced delays of at least half an hour.

In 2024 alone, ATFM delays reached 30.4 million minutes, compared with 14.2 million minutes in 2015. Notably, nearly 38 per cent of last year’s delays occurred during the peak summer months of July and August.

Behind much of the disruption, IATA said, are persistent staffing and capacity shortfalls. In 2024, these factors accounted for 87 per cent of ANSP-related delays.

Staffing-related delays, excluding strikes, have risen by 201.7 per cent since 2015.

At the same time, industrial action has become a more visible source of disruption.

Strikes accounted for 8.8 per cent of ANSP-caused delays over the decade, generating an estimated 9.8 million minutes of delay, even though the period includes the pandemic years, when air traffic volumes fell sharply.

IATA said the figures are calculated either for full-year 2024 or for data available up to October 2025, depending on availability, adding that an updated version of the report will be published once full-year 2025 figures become available.