Air traffic control held the average European flight for 1.7 minutes in 2025, almost double the EU's own target. One year earlier, en-route delay hit its worst level in 23 years.
Why this matters: when an air traffic control centre runs short of controllers or sector capacity, aircraft wait on the ground, and the delay follows them for the rest of the day. For journalists, EUROCONTROL's data shows exactly which countries and control centres generate those minutes, and how the picture has changed in 2026.
Key Takeaways
- En-route air traffic control delay reached 1.7 minutes per flight in 2025, 0.8 minutes above the EU-wide target of 0.9. The 2026 target is tighter still, at 0.7.
- France generated about a third of all en-route delay minutes in both 2025 and the first nine months of 2026, and Marseille was the worst control centre in Europe in 2025.
- From January to September 2026, en-route delay fell 19% year on year to 1.56 minutes per flight, with almost no strike delay.
En-Route ATC Delay in Europe Since 2015
EUROCONTROL measures air traffic control delay as en-route ATFM delay: the time aircraft are held because the airspace ahead cannot take them. This chart shows the average per flight across the EUROCONTROL area.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal en-route ATFM delay data (daily, by air navigation service provider), EUROCONTROL area, accessed 13 November 2026.
Delay roughly doubled in 2018 and has stayed high ever since, apart from the pandemic years. 2024 was the peak at 2.1 minutes per flight, which EUROCONTROL describes as the worst performance for 23 years. 2025 brought a 21% improvement to 1.7 minutes, even with 4% more flights in the system. The 2026 figure covers January to September only, so it includes the summer peak and tends to run above the full-year average: in 2025, the January to September figure was 1.92 minutes against 1.7 for the whole year.
How Far Europe Is from the EU Target
The EU sets a Union-wide capacity target for en-route ATFM delay in each year of its fourth reference period (2025 to 2029). Compare the actual delay with the target in each pair of bars.
Source: EUROCONTROL, European Aviation Overview: 2025 Review, 23 January 2026; Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2024/1688, 12 June 2024; AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL en-route ATFM delay data for January to September 2026.
Europe missed the 2025 target by 0.8 minutes per flight, close to double the allowed level. The targets then tighten every year: 0.7 minutes in 2026, 0.6 in 2027 and 0.5 in 2028 and 2029. Even after a better 2026, delay so far this year is more than twice the 2026 target. EUROCONTROL's Network Manager said in September 2026 that 13 of the network's 68 control centres look set to miss the European capacity target this year.
What Causes Air Traffic Control Delays
Every minute of en-route delay carries a cause code. Grouping them shows which problems drive the totals in each year.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal en-route ATFM delay data (daily, by air navigation service provider), EUROCONTROL area, accessed 13 November 2026.
ATC capacity and staffing together make up the largest share in almost every year: 58% of en-route delay in 2025, according to EUROCONTROL. Weather is the most volatile part, rising to about 36% of the total in 2024, when EUROCONTROL recorded weather delays at record levels, and 34% so far in 2026. Strikes dominate only in particular years, most visibly 2023. The large "other" block in 2022 comes mostly from delays coded as special events and other non-standard causes.
Summer: When Air Traffic Control Delays Pile Up
Air traffic control delay is a summer problem. Traffic peaks in June, July and August, as do the thunderstorms that close airspace sectors.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal en-route ATFM delay data, 1 June to 31 August of each year; 2026 figure from EUROCONTROL, Special Flash Briefing: Summer 2026, 11 September 2026.
Summer 2024 was the worst on record in this series, at 4.66 minutes per flight. Summer 2026 came in at 2.62 minutes, 16% lower than 2025, while traffic grew 2.4% to almost 36,000 flights a day. EUROCONTROL put 49% of summer 2026 en-route delay down to ATC capacity and staffing, 43% to severe convective weather and only 1% to strikes. For a wider view of how the seasons shape delays, see our peak travel season delay statistics.
Month by Month: 2024, 2025 and 2026
Monthly figures show where the 2026 improvement came from. Follow the three lines through July.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal en-route ATFM delay data (daily, by air navigation service provider), EUROCONTROL area, accessed 13 November 2026.
July is normally the worst month: 5.71 minutes per flight in 2024 and 3.97 in 2025. In 2026, July fell to 2.68 minutes, below August for the first time in these three years. Winter months stayed close to 0.4 minutes per flight in all three years, which shows how concentrated the problem is in the peak season. September 2026 dropped to 1.62 minutes, against 2.49 a year earlier.
Which Countries Generate the Most ATC Delay
Each air navigation service provider is responsible for the delay its airspace generates. This ranking shows each provider's share of all en-route delay minutes in the first nine months of 2026.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal en-route ATFM delay data (daily, by air navigation service provider), EUROCONTROL area, accessed 13 November 2026.
France's DSNA generated almost one minute in three of all en-route delay in Europe. Spain's ENAIRE comes second with 17%, and Greece's HASP is third with 12%, ahead of Germany's DFS. EUROCONTROL's summer 2026 briefing named Marseille, Athens and Barcelona as the control centres where constraints were most frequent, citing capacity and staffing issues. Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre, which handles upper airspace over the Benelux countries and north-west Germany, accounted for only about 1.4% of delay minutes.
The Delay Map Is Shifting South
The countries at the top of the table have changed quickly. This chart compares five countries' shares over the same January to September period in 2024, 2025 and 2026.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal en-route ATFM delay data (daily, by air navigation service provider), EUROCONTROL area, accessed 13 November 2026.
Hungary's share collapsed from 14% to under 1%. In 2024, EUROCONTROL linked HungaroControl's delays to staffing issues and traffic diverted around Ukrainian airspace. Germany's share has fallen every year, while Spain's has almost doubled and Greece's has more than doubled. EUROCONTROL linked Spain's 2025 delays, mostly generated by the Barcelona and Madrid control centres, to 5% traffic growth. France remains the largest contributor by a wide margin.
The Control Centres with the Worst Delays
Delay per flight at area control centre level gives the sharpest view. EUROCONTROL lists the centres with the highest averages for 2025.
Source: EUROCONTROL, European Aviation Overview: 2025 Review, 23 January 2026.
Marseille was the only control centre above 1.3 minutes per flight in 2025, at 2.6 minutes. EUROCONTROL said its capacity and staffing delays rose by 147% on 2024 and made up 73% of its total. Reims followed at 1.3 minutes. Karlsruhe, which accounted for 63% of Germany's en-route delay, improved by 44% but still averaged 0.8 minutes. In summer 2026, Marseille, Reims and Karlsruhe were again the most penalising locations for Europe's busiest airlines.
Air Traffic Control Strikes
Strikes by air traffic controllers make headlines, but how much delay do they cause across a year? This chart shows the en-route delay minutes coded as ATC industrial action.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal en-route ATFM delay data (daily, by air navigation service provider), EUROCONTROL area, accessed 13 November 2026.
2023 stands out with almost 3 million minutes of strike delay, the year of repeated French ATC strikes cited in EUROCONTROL's 2024 review. In 2025, strikes in France on 3 and 4 July and in Serbia from late August to the end of September added about 0.7 million minutes. 2026 has been close to strike free so far: EUROCONTROL recorded one industrial action in summer 2026, by Norwegian air traffic control, which caused about 14,500 minutes of delay and around 150 cancellations.
What ATC Delay Means for Late Flights
We compared EUROCONTROL's monthly en-route delay with the share of EU flights arriving an hour or more late in AirAdvisor's flight database. The two lines use separate axes.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights to and from EU airports, January to September 2026; AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL en-route ATFM delay data.
From May to September the two lines move together: 6.2% of EU flights arrived an hour or more late in August, the month with the highest air traffic control delay. January breaks the pattern. It had the highest share of late flights in the period, 6.7%, while en-route ATC delay stayed near its lowest level, so January's disruption came from causes outside en-route air traffic control. Our EU and UK flight delay statistics and airports with the worst delays cover the wider picture.
For passengers, the cause of a delay matters. Recital 15 of Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 treats an air traffic management decision that causes a long delay or cancellation as an extraordinary circumstance, which can rule out compensation. The EU reform agreed in June 2026 kept the three-hour delay threshold for compensation. To see how delays differ by airline, read our average flight delay statistics by airline.
References and Sources
- EUROCONTROL, European Aviation Overview: 2025 Review, 23 January 2026: eurocontrol.int
- EUROCONTROL, European Aviation Overview: 2024 Review, 23 January 2025: eurocontrol.int
- EUROCONTROL, Special Flash Briefing: Summer 2026 (1 June to 31 August) Network Performance, 11 September 2026: eurocontrol.int
- EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal, En-route ATFM delay data by air navigation service provider, daily files 2015 to September 2026, accessed 13 November 2026: ansperformance.eu
- Performance Review Body, Annual Monitoring Report 2025, Network Manager, 2026: eurocontrol.int
- Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2024/1688 of 12 June 2024 setting Union-wide performance targets for the air traffic management network for the fourth reference period: eur-lex.europa.eu
- European Parliamentary Research Service, air passenger rights revision, updated 30 June 2026: europarl.europa.eu
- Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council on air passenger rights: eur-lex.europa.eu
- AirAdvisor's flight database, monthly EU flight report, 1 January to 30 September 2026, accessed 13 November 2026.
Methodology
Air traffic control delay in this article means en-route ATFM (air traffic flow management) delay: the delay given to flights departing on time because a sector of airspace on their route has reached capacity. It excludes airport ATFM delay (0.7 minutes per flight in 2025) and knock-on delay from earlier flights. Annual, monthly, summer, cause and provider figures are AirAdvisor's calculations from EUROCONTROL's daily en-route ATFM delay files, using the "EUROCONTROL Area (MS)" totals and individual providers' delay minutes. These files are not adjusted after operations, so they can differ slightly from EUROCONTROL's published figures. Where EUROCONTROL publishes a figure, we use it: 1.7 minutes per flight for 2025 and 2.62 minutes for summer 2026.
At the time of writing, EUROCONTROL's 2025 daily file ran to 30 November 2025 and the 2026 file to 30 September 2026. Charts marked 2025* cover January to November 2025, and charts marked 2026* cover January to September 2026. Provider shares compare January to September in each year. "Other causes" groups all remaining cause codes, including equipment, airspace management and special events. Strike delay uses the ATC industrial action cause code. Country labels follow each provider's main airspace; SMATSA serves Serbia and Montenegro. The EU targets come from Implementing Decision (EU) 2024/1688. AirAdvisor's flight database figures are the monthly share of flights to and from EU airports that arrived 60 or more minutes late; cancelled flights are excluded. All figures are historical, none are forecasts, and values are rounded.
