Travel

Doubling of flight delays in Europe

Enaire, responsible for air navigation, released this map to show how air traffic was avoiding the Marseille Control Centre area during industrial action. | Enaire

Majorca Daily Bulletin reporterPalma20/06/2018 00:00

Eurocontrol reported yesterday that there was a daily average of 370 flights at Palma Son Sant Joan Airport in May, an increase of 3.8% over May 2017. In the whole of Europe, Eurocontrol managed a 2.9% rise in flights. This was the highest average increase for May over the past five years. At the same time, there was a doubling in delays due to weather conditions, capacity and, above all, strikes by French air-traffic controllers.

The Marseille control centre was not the worst in terms of registering delays. It lost 13,286 minutes, while the Karlsruhe centre in Germany lost 18,799 minutes.

There was in fact a report earlier in the week which stated that delays in the European Union had trebled since the start of the year. The average per flight was 1.5 minutes, up from 0.5 minutes. In May, there were some 117,000 delays, 61% of which were the result of industrial action by air-traffic controllers or a lack of controllers.