More than 700 flights have been cancelled with more likely to go as the European air control system goes into meltdown as the school holidays start. Flight companies have rounded on the Euro air traffic control system as ‘no longer fit for purpose’ after chaos over the busiest weekend of the year.
Johan Lundgren, chief executive of easyJet, said although many flights were hit by the CrowdStrike IT outage – more than 100 were down to air-traffic control (ATC) providers in Europe. And today Ryanair lashed out, saying that over 100 of its early flights on Monday had been hit by the issues, too.
It said it apologises to its passengers for the excessive flight delays caused by European ATC staff shortages, today, Monday, 22 July, which are affecting all European airlines.
“On Mon 22 Jul, 19% of Ryanair’s first wave departures (108 of 581 aircraft) were delayed due to ATC ‘staff shortages’. These repeated flight delays due to ATC mismanagement are unacceptable. We apologise to our passengers for these repeated ATC flight delays which are deeply regrettable but beyond Ryanair’s control.”
Operator Jet2 said: “We are currently experiencing some Air Traffic Control slot delays on flights that are due to arrive, depart or fly across the Eastern Mediterranean, this is due to weather conditions in many parts of Eastern Europe. Our UK Based Operations team is working hard to minimise disruption to our flying programme, however, you may experience some disruption if you are travelling to/from areas affected.”
Mr Lundgren told the Independent: “The past few weeks have been a clear demonstration that European ATC is no longer fit for purpose. We are seeing unprecedented delays, with slots restrictions applied to more than 50 per cent of our flights yesterday and today at ‘first wave’ due to a combination of staffing and capacity constraints and adverse weather.
“This cannot go on. Urgent reform alongside additional resilience and staffing need to be put into place so passengers don’t have to suffer the consequences of lengthy delays or the risk of their flight being cancelled.”
easyJet said the issue was not with the UK air traffic control, but the European coordinator Eurocontrol. Eddie Wilson, chief executive of Ryanair DAC, last week said: “It is really, really difficult at the moment with ATC. Over the last 10 days something happened in terms of how they organise it or their staffing. We, like other airlines, were hitting 30 per cent of [total delays] down to air-traffic control.
“There has been a meltdown in European air traffic control over the last two weeks.”
A Eurocontrol spokesperson said: “Saturday 20 July and Sunday 21 July were among the busiest days in 2024 for air traffic in Europe with 32,513 flights on Saturday and 33,417 on Sunday.
“The global IT shutdown of 19 July had a knock-on effect on airlines and airports, putting additional pressure on an already saturated aviation network.
“Combined with convective weather – thunderstorms, etc – across much of central Europe, this resulted in significant delays and disruption for passengers across the continent.”
The average air-traffic control flow management delay per flight was 12.6 minutes – of which 5.6 minutes “was caused by regulations put in place to protect against the adverse weather conditions”, Eurocontrol said. One-ninth of the total hold-ups was attributable to staff absence.
On Monday morning, half of easyJet’s “first wave” of departures were delayed by a slot restriction. The knock-on effect will lead to delays and possible cancellations later in the day.