Global Flight Cancellations Amid COVID-19: Statistics 2020-2025
On 12 April 2020, Europe's air traffic network handled just 2,099 flights, its lowest daily count of the pandemic. That month US airlines cancelled 41.3% of their scheduled domestic flights, the highest monthly rate on record.
Why this matters: COVID-19 caused what IATA called by far the sharpest traffic decline in aviation history, and a refund crisis that regulators on both sides of the Atlantic spent three years cleaning up. This page is a historical record of 2020 to 2022 and the recovery through 2025, built on final, revised figures from ICAO, IATA, Eurocontrol and the US Department of Transportation rather than the early estimates published in 2020. For cancellations in 2025 and 2026, see our current flight cancellation statistics.
Key COVID-19 Flight Cancellation Statistics at a Glance
- The world's airlines carried 1.77 billion passengers in 2020, 60.2% fewer than the 4.46 billion of 2019.
Source: ICAO Civil Aviation Statistics via World Bank WDI, 2026 - Passenger numbers were still 27.5% below 2019 in 2022, at 3.23 billion.
Source: ICAO Civil Aviation Statistics via World Bank WDI, 2026 - Airlines carried about 5 billion passengers on 38 million flights in 2025, more people than in any earlier year.
Source: ICAO Safety Report release, July 2026 - Europe's network handled only 2,099 flights on 12 April 2020, and flights were down 88.2% for April as a whole.
Source: Eurocontrol Annual Network Operations Report 2020 - Europe lost 6.13 million flights in 2020, a 55.2% fall on 2019.
Source: Eurocontrol Annual Network Operations Report 2020 - European flights only passed their 2019 total in 2025, when 11.12 million flights beat 2019 by about 16,800.
Source: Eurocontrol Data Snapshot #57, January 2026 - US airlines cancelled 41.3% of scheduled domestic flights in April 2020, more than double the previous record of 20.2% set in September 2001.
Source: US DOT Air Travel Consumer Report, June 2020 - 30 March 2020 was the worst day of the pandemic in the US: 10,994 domestic flights cancelled, 53.1% of the schedule.
Source: BTS Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance data, 2020 - 84.4% of US cancellations in 2020 were filed under the security cause code, 237,189 of 281,034.
Source: BTS Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance data, 2020 - US airlines cancelled 26,199 domestic flights between 24 December 2021 and 9 January 2022, 60.2% of them coded as airline-caused.
Source: BTS Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance data, 2021-2022 - Omicron pushed European traffic down from 78% to 68% of 2019 levels in January 2022.
Source: Eurocontrol Analysis Paper, December 2022 - DOT received a record 102,560 airline complaints in 2020, and 87.3% were about refunds.
Source: US DOT Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2022 - DOT's November 2022 orders covered more than $600 million in refunds and $7.25 million in fines against six airlines, led by Frontier at $222 million.
Source: US Department of Transportation, November 2022 - About 50 million air tickets were cancelled in the EU between March and May 2020, by the EU auditors' estimate.
Source: European Court of Auditors Special Report 15/2021 - Under EU law a voucher can replace a cash refund only if the passenger agrees, and the Commission recommended that vouchers last at least 12 months.
Source: European Commission Guidelines (March 2020) and Recommendation (EU) 2020/648 (May 2020) - Global air traffic finished 2024 3.8% above its 2019 level, the first full year above pre-pandemic demand.
Source: IATA full-year traffic release, January 2025
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Global Air Passenger Numbers Before, During and After COVID-19
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN agency for aviation, counts every passenger carried by airlines registered in its member states. Its revised series shows how far the pandemic pushed traffic back, and how long the climb out took.
Source: ICAO, Civil Aviation Statistics of the World and ICAO staff estimates, via World Bank World Development Indicators (series IS.AIR.PSGR, updated 13 July 2026), 2019-2023; ICAO, The World of Air Transport in 2024, Annual Report 2024 (preliminary); ICAO, Safety Report release, 23 July 2026 (2025, rounded by ICAO to about 5 billion). The 2024 and 2025 bars come from ICAO's scheduled-services figures, a different series from the 2019-2023 World Bank totals, so the step from 2023 to 2024 is not a like-for-like growth rate (ICAO reports +7.9% for 2024).
Passengers fell from 4.46 billion in 2019 to 1.77 billion in 2020, a 60.2% drop, while departures fell 47.2%, from 38.1 million to 20.1 million, so the planes that did fly carried fewer people. 2021 brought only a partial rebound to 2.28 billion, 48.8% below 2019, and 2022 reached 3.23 billion, still 27.5% short. Traffic got back to within 4.2% of the 2019 total in 2023 (4.27 billion) and passed it in 2024, when ICAO's preliminary count reached 4.7 billion. In 2025 airlines carried about 5 billion passengers on 38 million flights, ICAO says. For the longer passenger trend, see our airline passenger traffic statistics.
Europe's Daily Flights Fell 88% in April 2020
Eurocontrol, the organisation that manages air traffic flows across Europe, tracks every flight under instrument flight rules (IFR), which nearly all commercial flights follow. The chart compares each month's average daily flights with the same month of 2019, so a reading of 100% means traffic was back to its pre-pandemic level.
Source: Eurocontrol Performance Review Unit, en-route ATFM delay dataset (daily IFR flights, Eurocontrol Area), release of 15 September 2026, AirAdvisor calculation of monthly averages against the same month of 2019; trough figures from Eurocontrol, Annual Network Operations Report 2020, 15 April 2021.
The collapse took a month. Flights were down 41.1% in March 2020 and 88.2% in April, when the network averaged about 3,500 flights a day and bottomed out at 2,099 flights on 12 April. May was barely better at minus 85.9%. A summer rebound faded as restrictions returned in the autumn, and 2020 ended with 6.13 million fewer flights than 2019. 2021 finished 44% below 2019 with 6.2 million flights, and Omicron knocked traffic back from 78% to 68% of 2019 in January 2022. The climb after that was slow: 83% of 2019 in 2022, 92% in 2023 and 96% in 2024. April 2025 was the first month on the chart to beat its 2019 equivalent, at 100.9%, and full-year 2025 finished about 16,800 flights above 2019, at 11.12 million.
US Flight Cancellation Rates During the Pandemic, 2019-2022
The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) counts a flight as cancelled if it was in an airline's reservation system during the seven days before departure but did not operate. Flights dropped from schedules earlier than that do not count, which matters here: airlines cut hundreds of thousands of flights in advance and still cancelled a record share of those left.
Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present), TranStats, January 2019 to December 2022, accessed 25 September 2026. AirAdvisor aggregation of flights operated by reporting carriers. BTS's published marketing-carrier rates are 16.9% for March 2020 and 41.3% for April 2020.
The rate jumped from 0.89% in February 2020 to 17.0% in March and 41.5% in April on this operating-carrier count. BTS's headline figure for April, 41.3%, is the highest monthly rate on record and more than double the 20.2% of September 2001. The ten marketing network carriers scheduled 331,238 domestic flights in April 2020, against 668,259 a year earlier, and operated only 194,390, an all-time monthly low. The worst single day was 30 March 2020, with 10,994 cancellations, 53.1% of the schedule. By June 2020 the rate was down to 0.36%, because airlines had cut their schedules far enough to fly almost everything that was left. Later spikes had other causes: a winter storm in February 2021 (5.54%, nearly all weather-coded), the Omicron wave and winter weather in January 2022 (6.18%), and December 2022 (5.49%), when, DOT said, Southwest's holiday disruption stranded millions of travellers. Disruption patterns in normal years are covered in our global flight disruption statistics.
Why Most US Cancellations in 2020 Were Coded as Security
Airlines must give BTS one of four causes for every cancellation, and none of them was designed for a pandemic. In 2020, carriers filed most of their pandemic cancellations under security, a code normally used for evacuations, security breaches and screening problems.
Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present), TranStats, January to December 2020, accessed 25 September 2026. AirAdvisor aggregation by cancellation code.
237,189 of 2020's 281,034 cancellations (84.4%) carried the security code, against just 19 in the whole of 2019. Almost all of them fell in March (97,858) and April (125,371), and security accounted for 96.4% of April's cancellations. Weather (20,424), airline causes (19,008) and the air traffic system (4,413) made up the rest. On our count the overall 2020 cancellation rate was 5.99%, more than three times 2019's 1.82% (BTS's published rates are 5.99% and 1.90%). Anyone comparing BTS cause data across years should treat the 2020 security share as a pandemic artefact rather than a sign of security problems.
BTS uses four cancellation codes. Carrier covers problems the airline controls, such as crew, maintenance, cleaning and fuelling. Weather means extreme weather. National Aviation System (NAS) covers air traffic control, airport operations, heavy traffic and non-extreme weather. Security covers evacuations, security breaches and screening problems. The codes changed nothing for passengers: a passenger who turned down the airline's alternative was owed a refund whatever code the airline chose.
The Omicron Cancellations of December 2021 and January 2022
The Omicron variant arrived just as the holiday peak began. In the four days before Christmas Eve, US reporting carriers cancelled between 101 and 217 flights a day; from 26 December the daily total topped 1,000 on every day but one until 9 January, with airline-coded causes, the category that covers crew shortages, the largest share.
Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present), TranStats, daily totals 20 December 2021 to 17 January 2022 (AirAdvisor aggregation by flight date and cancellation code).
Between 24 December 2021 and 9 January 2022, reporting carriers cancelled 26,199 domestic flights, 8.8% of their schedule. Airline-coded causes accounted for 15,770 of them (60.2%) and weather for 9,736. The worst day was 3 January 2022, with 2,960 cancellations (15.4%), 1,564 of them weather-coded. On 27 December 2021 the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention cut its recommended isolation period for people with COVID-19 to 5 days. Airline-coded cancellations dropped below 400 a day from 11 January, and the spike on 16 January (2,792) was almost all weather. Outside the US, IATA estimated that Omicron travel restrictions slowed the recovery in international demand by about two weeks in December 2021.
Airline Refund Complaints Hit a Record in 2020
When flights were cancelled, many airlines and travel agents offered credits instead of cash. Under US law, a passenger whose flight is cancelled or significantly changed is entitled to a refund if they do not accept the alternative offered, and complaints to the US Department of Transportation (DOT) show how often that right was tested.
Source: US DOT Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2021 (2019 data), February 2022 (2020 data) and February 2023, revised April 2023 (2021 and 2022 data).
Complaints rose from 15,342 in 2019 to a record 102,560 in 2020, and 89,511 of them (87.3%) were about refunds, about 57 times the 2019 refund count of 1,574. April 2020 (19,856 complaints) and May 2020 (21,914) remain the two busiest months on DOT's record: even December 2022, when Southwest's holiday disruption pushed complaints to 16,876, came third. Refund complaints stayed high in 2021 (29,523, or 59.1% of the 49,991 total) and fell to 19,983 in 2022, when flight problems overtook refunds as the largest category.
US DOT Refund Orders and Fines, 2020-2022
DOT's first move came on 3 April 2020, when an enforcement notice reminded airlines that the pandemic had not changed their obligation to refund passengers promptly when flights are cancelled or significantly delayed. The largest enforcement action followed on 14 November 2022, and the chart shows every airline it covered.
Source: US Department of Transportation, More Than $600 Million in Refunds Returned to Airline Passengers Under DOT Rules Backed by New Enforcement Actions Issued Today, 14 November 2022 (consent orders in docket DOT-OST-2022-0001).
The six orders add up to $622.3 million in refunds, which DOT rounded to more than $600 million, and $7.25 million in civil penalties. Frontier paid the most, $222 million in refunds plus a $2.2 million penalty, followed by TAP Air Portugal ($126.5 million, $1.1 million penalty), Air India ($121.5 million, $1.4 million), Avianca ($76.8 million, $750,000), El Al ($61.9 million, $900,000) and Aeromexico ($13.6 million, $900,000). The fines took DOT's consumer protection office to $8.1 million in penalties for 2022, the largest amount it had ever issued in a single year. By April 2023, DOT said it had fined eight airlines a total of $11.925 million over the previous two years and that refunds returned to travellers since 2021 exceeded $1 billion.
EU Rules on Refunds and Vouchers During the Pandemic
In Europe the legal position was set early. The European Commission's interpretative guidelines of 18 March 2020 confirmed that when an airline cancels, the passenger chooses between reimbursement and re-routing, and that an airline offering a voucher cannot take away the passenger's right to a cash refund. The guidelines also said that cancellations caused by government flight bans or travel restrictions, or made to protect crew health, count as extraordinary circumstances, so the fixed EU261 compensation of 250 to 600 EUR generally did not apply to them. Refunds and care did.
The European Court of Auditors estimated that roughly 50 million tickets were cancelled between March and May 2020, and that EU passenger numbers fell from 70 million a month in January and February 2020 to about 1 million in April, 99% fewer than in April 2019. Its June 2021 audit found that many passengers were not reimbursed in the first phase of the crisis and many others had no choice but to accept vouchers; airlines started refunding from June 2020, with significant delays. In Portugal, 5.5 million tickets were cancelled in 2020 by the main carriers: 60% were refunded during the year and 28% were converted to vouchers with no assurance that passengers had agreed. The Commission approved up to 34.7 billion EUR in Member State aid for airlines and package organisers, with no requirement to report on passenger refunds. On 2 July 2020 the Commission opened infringement procedures against national laws that suspended refund rights.
What the Commission recommended for COVID-19 vouchers (Recommendation (EU) 2020/648, 13 May 2020): vouchers should be voluntary, valid for at least 12 months and protected against the airline's insolvency. If a voucher is not used, it should be refunded automatically at the latest 14 days after it expires, and a passenger holding a voucher valid for longer than 12 months should be able to ask for cash 12 months after it was issued.
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When Air Travel Recovered to 2019 Levels
Recovery came in stages, with domestic markets first and international travel later. IATA measures traffic in revenue passenger kilometres (RPKs), one paying passenger flown one kilometre, which gives long-haul flights their full weight.
Source: IATA full-year passenger releases of 3 February 2021 (2020 international), 25 January 2022 (2021, and revised 2020 total), 6 February 2023 (2022), 31 January 2024 (2023) and 30 January 2025 (2024).
Global traffic was at 34.2% of 2019 in 2020 and only 41.6% in 2021, when international travel was still 75.5% down. It reached 68.5% in 2022 and 94.1% in 2023, then passed 2019 in 2024 at 103.8%, with international traffic 0.5% above its 2019 high. Domestic markets led: global domestic traffic was 3.9% above 2019 by 2023. Asia-Pacific was the laggard, with its airlines' international traffic down 93.2% in 2021 and still 8.7% below 2019 in 2024. Total traffic grew another 5.3% in 2025. In the US, TSA screened 339.8 million people at airport checkpoints in 2020 (40.1% of 2019), 69.0% of the 2019 level in 2021 and 89.6% in 2022, before passing 2019 in 2023; our TSA checkpoint statistics track the daily numbers.
Market | Measure | Back above 2019 | Level reached |
Global domestic travel | IATA RPKs | 2023 | 3.9% above 2019 |
China domestic | IATA RPKs | 2023 | 7.1% above 2019 |
United States | TSA checkpoint screenings | 2023 | 858.5 million, 101.2% of 2019 |
Global total traffic | IATA RPKs | 2024 | 3.8% above 2019 |
Global international travel | IATA RPKs | 2024 | 0.5% above 2019 |
Worldwide passengers | ICAO passengers carried | 2024 | 4.7 billion (preliminary), against 4.46 billion in 2019 |
Europe | Eurocontrol flights | 2025 | 11.12 million, about 16,800 above 2019 |
Asia-Pacific airlines, international | IATA RPKs | 2025 (AirAdvisor calculation) | About 1% above 2019: 8.7% below in 2024, then up 10.9% in 2025 |
Outlook
By 2025 the numbers had fully recovered: nearly 5 billion airline passengers worldwide, a record 11.12 million flights in Europe and US checkpoint volumes above 900 million a year. The rules changed more slowly. In the US, the refund obligation DOT enforced case by case during the pandemic became an automatic-refund rule in April 2024. In the EU, the 2020 voucher safeguards were only a recommendation, and the auditors found clear limits to how Member States enforced passenger rights. In both markets, a passenger whose flight is cancelled can still insist on cash instead of a voucher.
References and Sources
- World Bank, World Development Indicators: Air transport, passengers carried (source: ICAO Civil Aviation Statistics of the World and ICAO staff estimates), updated 13 July 2026
- World Bank, World Development Indicators: Air transport, registered carrier departures worldwide (source: ICAO), updated 13 July 2026
- ICAO, The World of Air Transport in 2024, Annual Report of the Council 2024
- ICAO, International Civil Aviation Organization Analysis Reveals Major Priorities for Air Transport Safety (Safety Report release), 23 July 2026
- Eurocontrol, Annual Network Operations Report 2020, 15 April 2021
- Eurocontrol, Think Paper #15: Charting the European Aviation Recovery, 2021 COVID-19 Impacts and 2022 Outlook, 1 January 2022
- Eurocontrol, Analysis Paper: 2022, the Year European Aviation Bounced Back, Despite War and Omicron/COVID, December 2022
- Eurocontrol, European Aviation Overview: 2023 Review, 18 January 2024
- Eurocontrol, European Aviation Overview 2024, 23 January 2025
- Eurocontrol, Data Snapshot #57: 2025 European Aviation in Numbers, 6 January 2026
- Eurocontrol Performance Review Unit, En-route ATFM Delay (AUA) dataset, daily IFR flights, release of 15 September 2026
- US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present), TranStats, data January 2019 to December 2022, accessed 25 September 2026
- US Department of Transportation, Air Travel Consumer Report: April 2020 Numbers, 26 June 2020
- US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, April's One-Two Punch: as Scheduled Flights Hit Record Lows, Cancellations Reach New Highs, 26 June 2020
- US DOT Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2021
- US DOT Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2022
- US DOT Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2023 (revised April 2023)
- US Department of Transportation, Air Travel Consumer Report: December 2022, Full Year 2022 Airline Complaint Data, 12 April 2023
- US Department of Transportation, Enforcement Notice Regarding Refunds by Carriers Given the Unprecedented Impact of the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency on Air Travel, 3 April 2020
- US Department of Transportation, More Than $600 Million in Refunds Returned to Airline Passengers Under DOT Rules Backed by New Enforcement Actions Issued Today, 14 November 2022
- US Department of Transportation, Refunds and Other Consumer Protections, final rule, 89 FR 32760, 26 April 2024
- US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC Updates and Shortens Recommended Isolation and Quarantine Period for General Population, 27 December 2021
- Transportation Security Administration, TSA Checkpoint Travel Numbers, annual pages 2019 to 2025, accessed 25 September 2026
- IATA, Passenger Demand Recovery Continued in 2021 but Omicron Having Impact, 25 January 2022
- IATA, 'Catastrophic' Year for Air Travel Demand (full-year 2020 results, released 3 February 2021), Airlines, 10 February 2021
- IATA, Passenger Demand Recovery Continued in December 2022 and for the Full Year, 6 February 2023
- IATA, Global Air Travel Demand Continued Its Bounce Back in 2023, 31 January 2024
- IATA, Global Air Passenger Demand Reaches Record High in 2024, 30 January 2025
- IATA, Strong 2025 Passenger Demand Masks Ongoing Capacity Constraints, 29 January 2026
- European Commission, Interpretative Guidelines on EU Passenger Rights Regulations in the Context of the Developing Situation with Covid-19 (2020/C 89 I/01), 18 March 2020
- European Commission, Recommendation (EU) 2020/648 on Vouchers Offered to Passengers and Travellers as an Alternative to Reimbursement, 13 May 2020
- European Court of Auditors, Special Report 15/2021: Air Passenger Rights During the COVID-19 Pandemic, Key Rights Not Protected Despite Commission Efforts, June 2021
- Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 on compensation and assistance to air passengers, EUR-Lex, 11 February 2004
Methodology Note
This is a historical page, so it uses the latest revised figures available on 25 September 2026 rather than figures published during the pandemic. World passenger and departure counts for 2019 to 2023 come from ICAO data as republished in the World Bank's July 2026 update (passengers carried by airlines registered in each country); 2024 is ICAO's preliminary figure for scheduled services and 2025 is ICAO's rounded figure from its July 2026 safety release (scheduled commercial flights), so the last two bars come from different ICAO series and are less precise than the rest; ICAO's own figures show 7.9% growth in 2024, less than the gap between the 2023 and 2024 bars suggests. European monthly percentages are AirAdvisor calculations from Eurocontrol's daily IFR flight counts for the Eurocontrol Area, comparing each month's daily average with the same month of 2019; annual European totals and the April 2020 trough are Eurocontrol's own published figures, which use the slightly different Network Manager area, so small differences of a few tenths of a point are expected. US monthly, daily and cause figures are AirAdvisor aggregations of BTS flight-level files for domestic flights operated by reporting carriers; BTS's headline tables count marketing carriers including codeshare partners, which is why April 2020 reads 41.5% on our chart and 41.3% in BTS's release: BTS counts 136,848 cancellations out of 331,238 scheduled flights, while our flight-level count by operating carrier finds 130,078. Other months differ by similar small margins (BTS published 6.3% for January 2022, against 6.18% on our count). Headline rates quoted in the text are BTS's published figures. Omicron-period figures cover 24 December 2021 to 9 January 2022 inclusive. Complaint counts use the most recent revision DOT has published for each year (2020 from February 2022, 2021 and 2022 from the April 2023 revision). The $622.3 million refund total is the sum of DOT's six published order amounts. IATA traffic is measured in RPKs; the 2020 total uses IATA's revised figure (minus 65.8%) and the 2020 international figure comes from its original February 2021 release. The Asia-Pacific 2025 recovery level is an AirAdvisor calculation that chains IATA's published 2024 gap to 2019 with its 2025 growth rate, and is approximate because IATA revises historic figures. No figures come from compensation-claim companies. Legal summaries describe the rules as they applied during the pandemic and are not legal advice. Percentages are rounded to one or two decimals.
Author:
Amy LancelotteJob/Position: Senior Writer & Content Strategist
Amy Lancelotte is a Senior Content Writer and editorial contributor at AirAdvisor with over seven years of experience producing research-based articles for international audiences. Her work focuses on travel, aviation, and air passenger rights, with an emphasis on factual accuracy, verified data, and clear, reader-first explanations.
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