Strikes grounded thousands of European flights between late 2025 and autumn 2026. Most of the damage came from airline and airport staff walkouts, led by Lufthansa's pilots and cabin crew, while air traffic control strikes caused less delay than in any of the previous three years.
Why this matters: who goes on strike decides what passengers can claim. Under EU rules, a strike by an airline's own crew usually leaves the airline liable for compensation, while an air traffic control strike usually does not. For journalists, the 2026 numbers show a clear shift in where strike disruption comes from.
Key Takeaways
- Germany had the worst month of any country we tracked: 5.1% of flights cancelled in April 2026, when Lufthansa faced six strike days. That is about 6 times Germany's average in the other ten months.
- Air traffic control and other industrial action caused about 59,000 minutes of flow delay in Europe from January to September 2026, 92% less than in the same months of 2025 and 98% less than in 2023.
- Passengers on flights cancelled by the airline's own striking staff are usually entitled to €250 to €600 in EU compensation. Air traffic control strikes generally count as extraordinary circumstances.
Where Strike Disruption Hit Hardest
We tracked the monthly share of cancelled flights in six large European markets. This chart shows each country's worst month of the past year.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights departing from or arriving in each country, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Germany stands well apart at 5.1%. Its worst month coincided with the April wave of Lufthansa strikes, and its second worst, March, at 3.6%, with a two-day pilot strike. France peaked in January, when heavy snow led the French civil aviation authority (DGAC) to cut up to 40% of morning flights at Paris-Charles de Gaulle on 7 January. The United Kingdom also peaked in January, a month with no major UK aviation strike in our research. Belgium's peak in March coincided with a national action day. Italy and Spain never cancelled more than 2% of flights in any month, even though Italy held strike days on 10 April and 29 May.
Germany: The Lufthansa Strikes
Lufthansa's dispute with the pilots' union Vereinigung Cockpit (pensions) and the cabin crew union UFO (a new framework agreement) produced strike calls on 12 February, 12 and 13 March, and 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 April 2026, according to the airline's first-quarter report. The chart compares cancellations with long delays in Germany over the same months.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights departing from or arriving in each country, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
The two lines move in opposite directions in spring. In April, Germany's cancellation rate jumped to 5.1% while the share of flights arriving an hour or more late fell to 0.7%, its lowest of the year. Strikes take flights out of the schedule altogether: Lufthansa planned to operate only about a third of its short-haul schedule and half of its long-haul flights on 13 and 14 April. On 16 April, Frankfurt airport operator Fraport recorded 656 cancellations out of 1,313 planned take-offs and landings. In the other ten months, Germany cancelled an average of 0.8% of flights.
Lufthansa Compared with Other Large Airlines
Monthly cancellation rates for four large European airlines show which disruptions came from strikes and which came from other causes.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, airline reports, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Lufthansa's line stays low for most of the year, then rises to 2.9% in March and 7.2% in April, the highest monthly figure in the chart apart from KLM's January. The one-day strike on 12 February, which Lufthansa said cancelled almost 800 flights and affected about 100,000 passengers, left a smaller mark on the monthly rate. KLM and Air France had their worst month in January, when snow hit Amsterdam and Paris. Lufthansa told investors that passenger assistance costs rose 47% to €73 million in the first quarter, which it put down to the strikes, bad weather and the conflict in the Middle East. For a wider ranking of airline cancellations, see our most unreliable airlines in Europe.
Belgium: National Action Days and Air Traffic Control Walkouts
Belgium has had a long run of national union action days against federal government policy, and its air traffic controllers walked out twice in 2026. The highlighted months are those in which a verified strike took place.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights departing from or arriving in each country, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Each spike lines up with a known strike. In November 2025, Brussels Airport cancelled all departing flights on 26 November because security and handling staff joined the national strike. On 12 March 2026 it again cancelled all departures for a national action day. In June, an unannounced walkout by controllers at skeyes, the Belgian air navigation service, halted air traffic to and from Belgium from 2 pm on 2 June, and Brussels Airport put cancellations at about 200 flights. September saw nightly strikes by controllers at Charleroi from 16 September, which skeyes estimated would affect 832 flights. Brussels Airport counted 2,395 flights cancelled across seven strike days in 2025. In the other eight months, Belgium cancelled an average of 1.1% of flights.
Flights Cancelled on Major Strike Days
Airlines, airports and EUROCONTROL publish cancellation counts for the biggest strike days. They measure different things, so compare the bars with care: some cover one airport, others a whole airline or network.
Source: Airlines for Europe via Euronews (4 July 2025); Lufthansa via Bloomberg (12 February 2026); Frankfurt and Munich airports via AFP (10 April 2026); Fraport via blue News (16 April 2026); Brussels Airport via VRT (2 June 2026) and Aerocorner (6 October 2026); EUROCONTROL Flash Briefing week 34 (26 August 2026).
The French air traffic control strike of July 2025 remains the largest single event in this period: Airlines for Europe counted 1,500 cancellations over two days, affecting more than 300,000 passengers. In 2026, the Lufthansa cabin crew strike on 10 April came closest, with Frankfurt airport reporting around 580 cancellations and Munich airport 400. The ATC strikes of 2026 were much smaller. Norway's controllers struck from 21 August, and EUROCONTROL counted about 150 cancelled flights and 14,500 minutes of delay.
Air Traffic Control Strikes: The Long View
EUROCONTROL records every minute of air traffic flow management (ATFM) delay by cause. We added up the minutes coded as industrial action, for both en-route airspace and airports, for January to September of each year.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal ATFM delay data (en-route delay by air navigation service provider and airport arrival delay), industrial action cause codes, accessed 13 November 2026.
2023 dwarfs every other year, with 2.8 million minutes by September and 3.2 million for the full year. Almost all of it came from France: the French air navigation service DSNA accounted for 99.6% of en-route strike delay in 2023. The 2025 total, 0.7 million minutes, came mainly from French strikes on 3 and 4 July and Serbian strikes from late August to the end of September, according to EUROCONTROL. 2026 is the quietest year in the series, at about 59,000 minutes. ATFM minutes understate the full cost of strikes, because flights cancelled in advance generate no delay at all.
How Much of Europe's Delay Comes from Strikes
To compare years with different traffic and weather, this chart shows strike delay as a share of all ATFM delay recorded in the same months.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal ATFM delay data (en-route delay by air navigation service provider and airport arrival delay), industrial action cause codes, accessed 13 November 2026.
In 2023, more than one minute in eight of flow delay in Europe was caused by strikes. In 2026, the figure is 0.3%, which matches EUROCONTROL's own description of summer 2026 as "virtually industrial action-free". Capacity shortfalls, staffing and storms now drive almost all air traffic delay: EUROCONTROL put 49% of summer 2026 en-route delay down to ATC capacity and staffing and 43% to severe weather. Our flight delay statistics for the EU and UK cover those causes in more detail.
2025 vs 2026, Month by Month
Comparing the two years month by month shows how concentrated strike delay is. A handful of strike days can account for most of a year's total.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal ATFM delay data (en-route delay by air navigation service provider and airport arrival delay), industrial action cause codes, accessed 13 November 2026.
July 2025 alone produced about 330,000 minutes of strike delay, almost all from the two-day French strike, and September 2025 added another 280,000 minutes during the Serbian dispute. No month in 2026 came close. The biggest, August, reached about 19,000 minutes, driven by the Norwegian controllers' strike. April and June 2026 show smaller bumps from Italian, Belgian and Portuguese ATC action.
Where 2026 Strike Delay Came From
The 2026 total is small, but it is spread across more countries than in earlier years, when France produced nearly all of it.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal ATFM delay data (en-route delay by air navigation service provider and airport arrival delay), industrial action cause codes, accessed 13 November 2026.
Norway leads after its controllers' strike in August, followed by Italy, where EUROCONTROL recorded strike delay in Italian airspace and at airports including Bologna and Naples on 10 April. Portugal and Belgium both had ATC action in the first week of June, which EUROCONTROL said produced more than 17,000 minutes of delay; Belgium's total also includes the Charleroi night strikes in September. France, which caused 57.6% of en-route strike delay in 2025, contributed only scattered minutes in 2026, including on 29 September at Marseille and Paris-Charles de Gaulle. Italy's 24-hour national air transport strike on 29 May barely registers in the delay data. ENAC, the Italian civil aviation authority, guaranteed flights between 07:00 and 10:00 and between 18:00 and 21:00 that day, and ATFM delay does not count flights cancelled in advance.
Strikes and Your Passenger Rights
Under Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 and the case law of the EU Court of Justice, passengers can claim compensation of €250 to €600 when a flight is cancelled less than 14 days before departure or arrives three or more hours late, unless the airline can show the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided. Strikes sit on both sides of that line.
- Airline staff strikes: in Case C-28/20 (2021), the Court of Justice of the EU ruled on 23 March 2021 that a lawful strike by an airline's own staff, called by a union to press workers' demands, is not an extraordinary circumstance. Passengers on flights cancelled by the 2026 Lufthansa pilot and cabin crew strikes therefore generally qualify for compensation.
- Air traffic control strikes: the Court said in the same judgment that strikes by air traffic controllers or airport staff are external to the airline and may count as extraordinary circumstances. Compensation is then usually refused.
- In every case: the airline must still offer a refund or rerouting, plus meals and, where needed, hotel accommodation while passengers wait.
Strikes are one of several causes behind the cancellations we track in our global flight cancellation statistics.
References and Sources
- AirAdvisor's flight database, country and airline monthly reports, data for 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026, accessed 13 November 2026.
- EUROCONTROL Aviation Intelligence Portal, en-route ATFM delay by air navigation service provider and airport arrival ATFM delay, daily files 2023 to September 2026, accessed 13 November 2026: ansperformance.eu
- EUROCONTROL, Special Flash Briefing: Summer 2026 (1 June to 31 August) Network Performance, 11 September 2026: eurocontrol.int
- EUROCONTROL, Flash Briefing Week 34 (17 to 23 August 2026), 26 August 2026: eurocontrol.int
- EUROCONTROL, Flash Briefing Week 23 (1 to 7 June 2026), 10 June 2026: eurocontrol.int
- EUROCONTROL, European Aviation Overview: 2025 Review, 23 January 2026: eurocontrol.int
- Lufthansa Group, 1st Interim Report January to March 2026, 6 May 2026: lufthansagroup.com
- Lufthansa Group, Lufthansa offers 60 percent of its long-haul flights despite strike action, 11 March 2026: lufthansagroup.com
- Lufthansa Group travel agent information, Strike announcement by the pilots' union VC at Lufthansa and Eurowings for 13 and 14 April 2026, 12 April 2026: lufthansaexperts.com
- Bloomberg, Lufthansa cancels 800 flights as pilots, crew go on strike, 12 February 2026: bloombergtax.com
- AFP via The Peninsula, Strike grounds around 90% of flights at two Lufthansa brands, 10 April 2026: thepeninsulaqatar.com
- blue News, Lufthansa pilots and flight attendants on strike, 16 April 2026: bluewin.ch
- The Brussels Times with Belga, 2,400 flights cancelled due to strikes at Brussels Airport this year, 26 December 2025: brusselstimes.com
- CAPA Centre for Aviation, Brussels Airport cancels all departing services on 26 November 2025 due to strike action, November 2025: centreforaviation.com
- CAPA Centre for Aviation, Brussels Airport cancels all departing services on 12 March 2026 due to strike action, 5 March 2026: centreforaviation.com
- VRT News, Air traffic to and from Belgium at a standstill from 2 pm, 2 June 2026: vrt.be
- The Brussels Times, More than 800 flights affected by air traffic controllers strike at Charleroi Airport, 15 September 2026: brusselstimes.com
- Aerocorner, Brussels Airport expects about 140 cancellations on Friday, 6 October 2026: aerocorner.com
- CAPA Centre for Aviation, ENAC confirms 24-hour strike action on 29 May 2026, 27 May 2026: centreforaviation.com
- Euronews, Airlines slam passenger disruption caused by French air traffic controller strike, 4 July 2025: euronews.com
- Air Journal, Paris airports slowed, up to 40% of flights cut on Wednesday morning, 7 January 2026: air-journal.fr
- AFAR, Rare heavy snowfall in Western Europe brings travel problems, January 2026: afar.com
- Court of Justice of the European Union, Judgment of 23 March 2021, Case C-28/20, ECLI:EU:C:2021:226: eur-lex.europa.eu
- Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council on air passenger rights: eur-lex.europa.eu
Methodology
Country figures come from AirAdvisor's flight database and cover flights departing from or arriving in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom in each month from November 2025 to October 2026. The cancellation rate is cancelled flights divided by all flight records for that country and month; the delay rate is flights arriving 60 or more minutes late divided by the same total. Airline figures come from AirAdvisor's monthly airline reports. The database stores one record per flight number, so codeshare flights appear under each airline that sells them and flight counts vary with coverage; we therefore publish percentages only. Germany's comparison average covers the ten months other than March and April 2026. Belgium's comparison average covers the eight months other than November 2025, March, June and September 2026. We link a monthly spike to a strike only when a strike verified in official statements or reputable news took place in that month, and we describe these as coinciding unless an official source attributes the cancellations.
Strike delay figures are AirAdvisor's calculation from EUROCONTROL's daily ATFM delay files: en-route delay for the EUROCONTROL area plus airport arrival delay at all reporting airports (Israel excluded), using cause codes for ATC industrial action and non-ATC industrial action. At the time of writing the 2026 files ran to 30 September 2026, so year-on-year comparisons use January to September. Full-year totals for 2023 and 2024 use all 12 months. Country shares for 2026 combine each country's air navigation service provider and its airports. ATFM delay measures only delay imposed through flow management and does not count flights cancelled in advance, so it understates the total impact of strikes. Cancellation counts on strike days are quoted as stated by the named airline, airport or EUROCONTROL and are not directly comparable with each other. EU261 compensation depends on flight distance and the circumstances of each case. All figures are historical and rounded.
