Europe’s air traffic increased by 3.8% in 2018, compared with the year before, to reach an all-time record of 11,011,434 flights, with daily average traffic of 30,168 flights.
There were 19 days in 2018 with over 36,000 flights – there were none in 2017. The network had its busiest day and all-time record on 7 September with 37,101 flights. Strong growth in November 2018 (4.2%) and in December 2018 (5.2%) helped achieve the final result.
The network generated a total of 19.1 million minutes of en-route delay (up 105% on 2017). The average en-route delay per flight for the whole year was 1.73 minutes (note that the EU-wide performance target for the year is 0.5 minutes) and the average delay per delayed flight was 19 minutes.
The generators of delays for 2018 were:
- capacity and staffing (60.4%)
- weather (25.3%)
- strikes/disruptive events (14.3%).