EUROCONTROL Flash Briefing: European aviation network in Week 30 (21-27 July 2025)

EUROCONTROL Flash Briefings provide you with an update on how the network is performing during the busy summer season. 

For Week 30 (21-27 July 2025):

Traffic: 35,473 daily flights, slightly below the previous week, +3% vs 2024, and 101% of pre-pandemic 2019 levels.

ATFM delays: Delays were significantly higher in Week 30 than in Week 29. Average delay for the week was 5.7 minutes per flight — a 30% increase from the previous week, 9% lower than in 2024. A total of 71,878 flights were delayed by air traffic flow management (ATFM) restrictions, an average of 10,268 flights a day and 29% of all flights. Five days during Week 30 had ATFM delays above 200,000 minutes (Monday 21 – 217,883 minutes, Thursday 24 – 232,244 minutes, Friday 25 – 215,738 minutes, Saturday 26 – 210,199 minutes and Sunday 27 – 294,155 minutes). The main drivers were increases in weather delays (61% of the total), ATC staffing delays (25%) and ATC capacity delays (9%).

Arrival punctuality: Down 4.0 percentage points vs Week 29 to 65% and better than last year by 3.8 percentage points.

Network hot spots:

• France (30% of all delays in the network): Affected by on-going capacity and staffing issues, compounded by adverse weather.
• Germany (16% of all delays in the network): Affected mostly by weather and some capacity issues.
• Austria (11% of all delays in the network): Affected by capacity issues related to high demand and temporary staffing issues.

Network Operations Plan (NOP) delivery:

• With 3.9% year-to-date traffic growth, en-route ATFM delay so far this year is 23% better than in 2024, with excellent delivery by most air navigation service providers (ANSPs) in South-East Europe, Central Europe, Italy and Switzerland.
• Most ANSPs are delivering the agreed capacity.
• Further reductions are being seen to expected delays in Germany.
• However, Marseille ACC did not provide the required capacity (generating 174K delay minutes), following a downwards revision in late May of the Network Operations Plan, and Vienna ACC experienced some staffing issues limiting the delivery of the agreed capacity (generating 127k delay minutes).

Actions to be taken: Reims and Vienna Area Control Centres (ACCs) will need to ensure that their plans align with the NOP for the upcoming weeks. Staffing and capacity delays will be further monitored. Implementation of capacity management scenarios by NMOC will be further amplified and, in this context, the proactive support of all ANSPs has been requested.

Weather: Convective weather affected significant parts of the network almost every day, except Tuesday 22 July. The scenarios pre-agreed between the ANSPs and the Network Manager (NM), moving traffic away from areas of forecast convective weather, saved 89,232 minutes of delay across the week, 13% of the total weather delay in Week 30.

Source: EUROCONTROL