Writer

Amy Wilder

Eurocontrol is warning of a difficult summer ahead for European airspace as traffic continues to rise and air traffic control capacity falls short in several key regions. The organization has agreed on a detailed plan with its operational stakeholders to mitigate air traffic delays during the continent’s 2025 summer travel season, as traffic volumes continue to rise and capacity shortfalls persist across several key air traffic control centers.
Detailed in a recent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.eurocontrol.int/news/new-eurocontrol-flash-briefing-preparing-summer-2025">flash briefing</a>, the plan lays out a five-point strategy aimed at reducing expected delays from an average of 2.44 minutes per flight to 2.02 minutes, though even that figure remains above the EU performance plan target of 0.9 minutes.
Traffic so far in 2025 is 5% higher than the same period last year, and Eurocontrol expects this upward trend to continue through the summer months. However, growth is not evenly distributed. Some regions of Europe are experiencing significantly higher traffic levels than others, placing strain on the network’s most congested control centers.&nbsp;
“There are already capacity shortages in the control centers at Marseille, München, Karlsruhe, Athens, Macedonia, Budapest, Barcelona, Sevilla, and Zagreb, so we know this summer will be difficult,” said Iacopo Prissinotti, director of Eurocontrol’s Network Management. “It is now essential that we focus, think, and act as a European network and that each individual stakeholder delivers what is agreed in the plan so we can try to make the summer as efficient as possible for the traveling public.”
The mitigation plan is built around five key elements:
<ul>
<li>Delivering agreed capacity by ensuring that each air navigation service provider (ANSP) adheres to previously committed staffing and sector availability levels.</li>
<li>Minimizing the impact of adverse weather, which can cause rapid and widespread disruption, especially during convective summer conditions.</li>
<li>Filing realistic flight plans and sticking to them, which helps reduce reroutings and enhances predictability across the network.</li>
<li>Prioritizing the first rotation of the day so that delays don’t cascade through subsequent legs of an aircraft’s schedule.</li>
<li>Ensuring that flight schedules are realistic and account for operational constraints already identified by Eurocontrol and its partners.</li>
</ul>
According to the flash briefing, implementing these measures could lower daily systemwide delays to around 70,000 minutes in total, a significant improvement, though still above pre-pandemic targets. For individual passengers, this would translate to an average of 15 to 20 minutes of delay per affected flight. By contrast, on a day when delays exceed 200,000 minutes, such as during adverse weather or major airspace disruptions, affected flights could face delays of 30 minutes or more. Eurocontrol estimates the cost to airspace users of a single high-delay day at approximately €20 million.
The briefing also notes that traffic peaks are likely to concentrate on Thursdays and Fridays, with those two days potentially accounting for 43% of total weekly delays. Saturdays and Sundays, while slightly less intense, remain above average.
Flight-planning flexibility will be constrained by military airspace activity and route availability. Eurocontrol is calling for improved coordination between civil aviation and military authorities, particularly for conditional route releases that could help ease congestion. Airport stakeholders, meanwhile, are urged to align slot allocations with actual operational capacity, especially at airports near known bottlenecks.
In addition to geographic focus areas, Eurocontrol highlights the importance of synchronized network behavior. Airlines are being asked to avoid tactical reroutes that diverge from pre-filed flight plans, and ANSPs are being urged to share data in real time to improve situational awareness and predictability.
The agency emphasized that no single stakeholder can resolve the challenge alone. Success of the plan depends on collective adherence by aircraft operators, ANSPs, airport operators, and military authorities. Eurocontrol will monitor compliance and adjust measures as needed based on traffic levels, weather impacts, and observed performance.

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