Almost all air navigation service providers (ANSPs) were strongly delivering on their Network Operations Plan (NOP) commitments, with en-route air traffic flow management (ATFM) delay – currently 22% lower for the summer to date vs 2025 – now projected to result by year-end in a global improvement of 24% fewer delays than last year.
In specific, Week 32 saw:
- 36,149 average daily flights, a slight drop in comparison with Week 31 (-0.9%), but with overall traffic remaining firmly above the same week in 2025 at +2.3%
- 73% arrival punctuality, +0.3 percentage points (pp) vs W31, -1.9pp vs 2025
- 3.44 minutes per flight ATFM delays, up 4% vs W31 and 17% higher than 2025 – split between en-route (2.79 mins) & airport (0.65 mins)
- 56,300 flights delayed by ATFM restrictions (8,043 flights a day and 22% of all flights)
- 280K of en-route ATFM delays saved by the continued application of capacity/weather measures in case of adverse weather across the network, bringing the total saved to date to 2.3M minutes, applied to 8.1K flights
- 8 new traffic records broken with 2 States, 5 area control centres and 1 airline group exceeding their previous daily records (all set this summer) of flights managed/operated.
Overall, the first 10 weeks of Summer 2026 vs Summer 2025 show:
- 2.3% more traffic
- 2.1pp improved arrival punctuality
- 22% fewer ATFM delays.
For ANSPs, adherence to their planned NOP capacity commitments continues to remain critical for the remainder of August, with continued traffic peaks of around 37,500 flights expected on Fridays.