Air traffic overload spells travel chaos this summer in Europe

Exclusive: easyJet blames double cancellation on airspace restrictions

Going places? easyJet aircraft at London Gatwick airport (Simon Calder)

July did not start well for Ricky Medcalf. He was due to begin the month by arriving in Dalaman in Turkey shortly after midnight on Saturday for the start of a much-needed holiday.

“The holiday this year was exactly what I needed to relax and get myself mentally well and healthy,” he says.

But his easyJet flight from London Gatwick to the Mediterranean coast was initially delayed by three hours, then abruptly cancelled.

Mr Medcalf was placed on the same flight the following day, and had to book his own hotel room.

That flight, too, was cancelled at the last minute. The holiday was over before it had begun.

Britain's biggest budget airline will not be paying compensation for the double cancellation. Both flights were grounded, says easyJet, due to “air-traffic control restrictions”.

A spokesperson said: “While air traffic restrictions are outside of our control, we fully understand the frustration for customers who experienced both cancellations and we are sorry for the inconvenience this will have caused.”

Judging from guidance published by Eurocontrol and studied by The Independent, the summer could become more chaotic due to congested airspace – and a shortage of controllers.

Eurocontrol, based in Brussels, is the pan-European air-navigation service. Last month the organisation reported a new network record of 1,684 movements at a single airport: Istanbul overtook, by 60 flights, the previous record of Frankfurt. That was set in September 2019. While aviation across Europe is not yet back to pre-Covid levels, the summer of 2023 is catching up fast.

Under Eurocontrol’s Network Operations Plan, Fridays in July are expected to see the heaviest traffic – with more than 34,000 daily flights to, from and within European airspace. The peak day in 2019 was 28 June, with 37,228 flights, but since then air-traffic controller numbers have been depleted.

The Eurocontrol plan warns of “high overloads” at seven key Area Control Centres. These hubs handle aircraft across a wide patch of airspace. The centres subject to high overload in July are:

• Athens on “most days”.
• Belgrade on Saturday 8 and 15 July.
• Budapest on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
• Nicosia on Fridays.
• Reims on “most days”.
• Warsaw on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.
• Zagreb on Saturday 8 and 15 July.

At times of high overload, a “declared sector capacity” limit is set to prevent controllers becoming overstretched.

Capping the number of flights that can enter an air-traffic control sector inevitably leads to delays or diversions: planes flying longer routings to avoid the constricted areas. That in turn increases pressure on the rest of the network.

Air-traffic control is chronically short-staffed in many parts of Europe: during the Covid pandemic, when air traffic numbers collapsed, many experienced controllers left the industry. Training has not caught up with demand.

Controllers and flight planners are having to work in a heavily constrained airspace environment, especially in eastern Europe. The war in Ukraine, and the related closure of airspace over Russia and Belarus to western aircraft, means many of the normal routes between Europe and Asia are unavailable.

Finnair’s link between Helsinki and Singapore, for example, would normally fly for four hours over Russia; instead, the plane tracks south to Bulgaria, where it competes with holiday traffic between western Europe and Turkey.

Elsewhere, pressure on controllers can increase swiftly if poor weather causes delays and diversions – or if air-traffic control staff in a major nation take industrial action. Ryanair says that in the first five months of 2023, air-traffic controllers walked out on 58 days – 11 times more than in 2022. The worst problems occur when French controllers strike, as they have done repeatedly this year in protest against President Macron’s plan to raise the retirement age to 64.

Last month Ryanair delivered a petition with 1.1 million signatures to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen’s office, from “fed-up passengers demanding that the Commission protect overflights and EU citizens’ freedom of movement”.

During his unexpected stay at Gatwick over the weekend, Ricky Medcalf ended up £800 out of pocket, which easyJet should refund. But he will never get back the lost holiday, and fears that many more people will have the same miserable experience.