Week 27 ssaw the all-time traffic record of 37,228 flights set in pre-COVID 2019 on Friday 28 June first exceeded on Thursday 2 July 2026 with 37,298 flights, which was in turn promptly surpassed the following day, Friday 3 July 2026, with 37,447 flights.
In a week in which network traffic continued to climb to reach 36,055 average daily flights, +1.4% vs Week 26 and +3.4% vs 2025, records continue to be set across the aviation ecosystem with four States, twelve Area Control Centres (ACCs) and nine major European airlines/airline groups all recording new daily traffic highs.
Overall, the first five weeks of Summer 2026 vs Summer 2025 show:
- +2.0% traffic
- +1.3pp arrival punctuality
- -19% air traffic flow management (ATFM) delays.
With fewer severe weather incidents, Week 27 (29 June-5 July 2026) saw improved punctuality/delay figures:
- 71% arrival punctuality was +0.2pp vs Week 26 and +3.2pp vs 2025
- 3.37 mins/flight ATFM delay, -8% vs Week 26 and -39% vs 2025 – split between en-route (2.73 mins) and airport (0.64 mins)
- 51,747 flights delayed by ATFM restrictions (7,392 a day, 21% of all flights).
With traffic reaching record levels, air navigation service provider (ANSP) adherence to their planned Network Operations Plan (NOP) capacity commitments is particularly critical, especially over the period 6-19 July, when significant traffic growth is expected with further Friday traffic peaks of 37.5K+ flights expected.
Network hot spots: to date France has generated 29% of en-route delays (of which 9% attributed to Reims, 7% Marseille and 5% Brest ACCs, mainly owing to capacity issues, staff shortages and transition issues with 4-FLIGHT, DSNA's new collaborative ATFM system, Spain 19% (of which 12% Barcelona, 3% Sevilla and 4% Madrid ACCs, reflecting capacity, staffing and high traffic growth) and Greece 13% (of which 9% Athens ACC and 4% Makedonia ACC, the result of capacity, staffing and demand related to the Middle East crisis).
Traffic distribution owing to the ongoing Middle East crisis impacts remains unchanged:
- lower air traffic in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Türkiye
- higher air traffic in Albania, Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia coupled with continuous traffic growth in South-West Europe.
For the year as a whole:
- en-route ATFM delays are -19.4% despite +1.0% traffic, reflecting strong coordination by the EUROCONTROL Network Manager (NM) and all ANSPs
- 1.05M minutes of en-route ATFM delay have now been saved thanks to the updated capacity and weather-based operations (CWBO) procedures and related scenarios, which again kicked into action to counter bad weather in Week 27, saving 205K of the cumulative total.