Network traffic continued to climb in Week 28 to reach 36,380 average daily flights, 0.9% more than Week 27 and 2.3% up on the same period in 2025.
Records continued to be set across the aviation ecosystem with six States, six Area Control Centres (ACCs) and six major European airlines/airline groups all recording new daily traffic highs – many exceeding records set just the week before in Week 27.
Overall, a comparison of the first six weeks of Summer 2026 vs Summer 2025 shows:
- +2.0% more traffic
- +1.8 percentage points (pp) better arrival punctuality
- -23% fewer air traffic flow management (ATFM) delays.
With again fewer severe weather incidents, Week 28 saw improved punctuality/delay figures:
- 74% arrival punctuality, up 3.7pp vs Week 27, and 3.5pp better than 2025
- 2.66 mins/flight ATFM delay, 21% lower than Week 27, and 30% below 2025 – split between en-route (2.10 mins) & airport (0.56 mins)
- 46,319 flights delayed by ATFM restrictions (6,617 a day, 18% of all flights).
As network traffic reaches record levels, air navigation service provider (ANSP) adherence to their planned Network Operations Plan (NOP) capacity commitments is particularly critical, especially over the period 13 July-30 August, when significant traffic growth is expected, with further Friday traffic peaks of over 37.5K flights expected.
To date, of the 68 ACCs included in the NOP:
- 57 are delivering in accordance with the NOP
- 7 are delivering in accordance with the NOP, but are being impacted by significant bad weather and/or the Middle East crisis
- 4 are not delivering in accordance with the NOP.
Network hot spots: to date France has generated 29% of en-route delays (of which 9% attributed to Reims, 8% 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 11% Barcelona, 4% Madrid and 3% Sevilla ACCs, reflecting capacity, staffing and high traffic growth); and Greece 13% (of which 9% Athens and 4% Makedonia ACCs, 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:
- 20% fewer en-route ATFM delays despite 1.1% more traffic, reflecting strong coordination by the EUROCONTROL Network Manager and all ANSPs
- 1.22M minutes of en-route ATFM delay now saved thanks to the updated capacity and weather-based operations procedures and related scenarios, which again kicked into action to counter bad weather in Week 28, saving 170K of that cumulative total.