Europe’s skies are busier than ever, but not by much. According to a sobering new report from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), air traffic control delays across Europe have more than doubled over the past decade, despite flight numbers barely moving the needle.
It’s a remarkable statistic, and not in a good way. Between 2015 and 2024, Air Traffic Flow Management (ATFM) delays surged by 114 per cent, while total flights increased by a modest 6.7 per cent. Weather delays were excluded. So were cancellations caused by strikes? What remains is an uncomfortable truth: Europe’s air traffic control system is struggling to keep pace with itself.
For travellers, the result has been longer waits, missed connections and summer travel that increasingly feels like a test of endurance. For airlines, the impact is operational chaos, ballooning costs and schedules built around inefficiency rather than ambition.
IATA’s Director General Willie Walsh did not mince words.
“We’re now seeing the consequences of Europe’s failure to get a grip on air traffic control,” Walsh said. “A small, expected improvement in 2025 from a very bad 2024 does not change the deterioration that we have seen over the last decade.”
The numbers are stark. Between 2015 and October 2025, 7.2 million flights were delayed due to ATC-related issues. Of those, 6.4 million were held up by up to 30 minutes, while 700,000 flights were delayed by at least half an hour, often long enough to unravel carefully timed itineraries.
In 2024 alone, delays totalled 30.4 million minutes, up from 14.2 million minutes in 2015. Almost 40 per cent of those delays occurred during July and August, when Europe’s airports are at their peak seasonal pressure and patience is at its lowest.
The root cause is neither mysterious nor new. Capacity constraints and staffing shortages account for the overwhelming majority of delays — 87 per cent in 2024. Staffing-related delays, excluding strikes, have surged by an astonishing 201.7 per cent since 2015.
France and Germany sit squarely at the centre of the problem. Their air navigation service providers are responsible for more than half of all ATC delays across Europe, a statistic that carries serious implications for the continent’s connectivity and competitiveness.
Industrial action has also played a role. ATC strikes accounted for 8.8 per cent of overall delays, with 9.8 million minutes lost over the decade, a figure made more striking by the fact that it includes the pandemic years, when air traffic all but collapsed.
Walsh’s frustration extends beyond operational failings to political priorities.
“Airlines and travellers were promised a Single European Sky that would cut delays and reduce fuel burn through more efficient navigation and routes,” he said. “Instead, passengers have seen delays more than double.”
He added pointedly that while European policymakers continue to debate expanding EU261 passenger compensation rules, the primary cause of delay — air traffic control itself — has largely escaped meaningful scrutiny or reform.
The broader consequences are significant. Airlines must pad schedules to absorb ATC inefficiency, eroding network reliability. Fuel burn increases as aircraft circle or take longer routes. And Europe’s reputation as a seamless, well-connected aviation market continues to fray at the edges.
An updated version of the IATA report will be released once full-year 2025 data becomes available. Few in the industry expect a dramatic turnaround.
For now, Europe’s skies remain a case study in how long-known problems, left unattended, eventually demand attention, usually at the worst possible moment, and from the departure lounge.
IATA report on European ATC delays: https://www.iata.org/en/publications/economics/reports/air-traffic-control-delays-in-europe/.
by Octavia Koo – (c) 2025
Read Time: 3 minutes.
About the Writer
Indonesian-born Octavia Koo arrived in Australia in the early 1980s, drawn by the creative promise of Sydney and a place at UNSW, where she studied Arts and soon discovered her flair for visual storytelling. She began as a graphic designer, quickly turning her sharp eye for detail towards the digital frontier, designing websites and crafting polished descriptions that draw people in—and keep them reading.
Her next chapter took her to Singapore, where she built and managed blogs for several tourism platforms, uncovering a natural gift for SEO long before the term became fashionable. There, amid the buzz of ITB Asia, she met Stephen, who suggested she consider Global Travel Media. A few years later, she did just that.
Now part of GTM’s editorial family, Octavia brings a quiet brilliance to her work. She merges art, technology, and intuition to tell travel stories that charm and perform, much like their author.
