(April 2025)
As we move into the spring and summer travel season, expect a significant increase in travel in the EUROCONTROL airspace.
EUROCONTROL routinely issues outlooks every Friday that cover the next two months. These outlooks encompass en-route capacity outlooks, aerodrome capacities, special events, military exercises and finally ATC projects, which may include airspace restructuring projects. Fortunately, in terms of planned events at the major aerodromes in Europe, the overall impact will be very low through the summer months.
As expected, traffic will slowly increase through the springtime with the annual change of 5% vs 2024 (graph 1). Fridays continue to be the busiest day of the week with 31,900 flights expected on the first Friday of April increasing to 33,200 flights by the end of April and 34,000 flights from mid-May. In 2024, on Friday’s during the summer season, the number of flights commonly exceed 35,000 (graph 2).
Strikes and weather, mainly in the form of thunderstorms, will continue to put stress on the system. Fortunately, EUROCONTROL issues a daily update around 16z which discusses in depth expected conditions over the continent for the next day including a detailed convective weather outlook. With access to computer models including lightning forecasts for the next several days we can often foresee weather delays days in advance which may assist in mitigating delays.
As we investigate the data a little deeper, we find that many of the general aviation airports in Europe that are typically busy in the spring and summer season, including many airports around the Mediterranean Sea, will experience a significant increase in traffic. Most significant daily traffic increases between now and middle May will be seen at (LGIR) Heraklion, Greece, (LIRN) Naples, Italy, (LEPA) Palma De Mallorca, Spain and (LEIB) Ibiza, Spain.
In many cases increases will exceed 200 percent and in some unique circumstances increases are more than 400 percent. Although these projections only go out to mid-May, I would anticipate a very busy summer season as general aviation flights get incorporated into their daily schedules.
In order to minimize delays in the EURCONTROL airspace this summer, they are requesting all operators to adhere to their flight plan profiles. From 01 June 2024 to 31 August 2024 EUROCONTROL recorded 593,913 vertical nonadherences. This resulted in a 5 to 10 percent capacity reduction and with at least a 5 percent increase in traffic predicted this summer this will only aggravate an already congested network.
Flight pro will continue to file your flight plans early to help mitigate possible delays. Although beyond your control in many cases it is highly advised to stick to your schedule and not make any last-minute changes which will likely invite serious delays.
— — —
For more global weather-related updates and analysis by FPI, see our ongoing notices on FPI’s LinkedIn page HERE. To learn more about FPI, FPC, or regarding the Compliance, Operations, Regulatory, and other Special Services Network (SSN) teams, please contact our Operations staff here at Flight Pro International.
Our success is your success! Partner with us today.