As Europe Hits Peak Flights, Travelers Can Help—By Being On Time

Europe is expecting a peak amount of planes in its skies this summer. At the same time, 20% of its airspace is out of bounds due to the war in Ukraine and there are greater risks of extreme weather due to climate change. While the pressure is on air traffic controllers, agencies and airlines, the good news is that every traveler flying in and out of Europe can play their part in keeping delays to a minimum in one basic way—by being on time.

Eurocontrol is a European government organisation that helps to achieve safe and seamless flights across the EU skies for planes carrying both holidaymakers and the military. Steven Moore, its Head of Air Traffic Management Operations expects 15% more air traffic than last year, and Moore told its Raising The Bar podcast of the particular challenges stemming from the war in Ukraine.

Moore highlights the radical changes in European skies since the Ukrainian war began 482 days ago. One fifth of the airspace surrounding Ukraine must be avoided, pre-existing traffic patterns and flows have changed, non-European carriers still operate across Russia (and get a competitive advantage over EU airlines that are following the current sanctions) and NATO and military traffic need to move freely.

The situation for EU flights is stable but it adds a new dimension to summer travel as traffic rebounds and causes pinch points that are a little tighter than usual. Moore is predicting that EU skies could reach peak travel this summer:

• in 2019, on the busiest day ever, there were about 37,242 flights in EU skies.
• in 2023, Eurocontrol is preparing for about 37,500 flights on any one day.

However, record travel days are not in and of themselves the main issue—it is more that to reach record days, they would have been preceded by many days of sustained busy traffic and it is this long sustained period that is difficult to manage.

Plus, these busy days will obviously be affected by bad weather that still proves incredibly difficult to forecast, and industrial action in countries such as France, when capacity is suddenly reduced and planes rerouted.

It sounds so simple, but some flights have turnarounds of about 45 minutes. One small delay doesn’t just stall that flight, but also the airline, the airport and then a number of airlines and airports across Europe, depending on where the airline and its passengers are due to wind up.

Some of these delays can be avoided by Eurocontrol encouraging controllers and pilots to stick to flight plans. Sometimes air traffic controllers want to give short cuts to get planes out of their sectors and pilots will happily take them to save money and time. However, these short cuts and faster flights can cause huge issues for surrounding planes and controllers downstream.

Airlines and crews also need to work to realistic turnaround times and not leave early or late—either is just as bad, as it throws all other flights out. Moore says that the rule of thumb is that every one minute in a departure delay on the first flight in the morning will cost 4 minutes by the end of the day. At this point, a 45-minute delay on that first flight, might mean that the final airplane can’t land because the airport is closed or it can’t return because the crew needs to sleep, and so on.

Finally, airlines run on very tight schedules, so the most important thing that every single passenger can do to ensure punctuality this summer is to keep to planned schedules—to help everyone else.

By being late or missing your flight, it won’t only hold up your plane, but it might just hold up a huge number of people across the European grid too—and that’s an awful lot of holiday plans ruined.