European air traffic management organisation Eurocontrol has described the summer as being “very complex and difficult”.
Traffic was up five per cent on 2023 levels and passengers suffered extensive delays, with more than a third of flights delayed by more than 15 minutes on arrival.
Delays were “much higher than expected” with an average of more than 21 minutes.
Punctuality over the summer peak remained close to the worst levels on record over the past 20 years.
Air traffic management contributed to this, with en-route delays of 4.6 minutes per flight, up 52% on 2023 and the second worst year ever, according to a review of the summer.
The poor performance was attributed to a combination of factors including a lack of air traffic controllers.
Some some air navigation service providers (ANSPs) did not deliver the capacity originally committed in preparation for the summer.
There was also “unexpectedly” high traffic growth in some areas, frequent bad weather during the summer and a high volume of flights not adhering to their original flight plans.
An average of 34,042 flights a day were recorded during the June-August peak, up 4.8% year-on-year.
Eurocontrol’s newly-published European aviation trends report said: “Although traffic was still 2.6% below summer 2019, multiple factors substantially changed the traffic distribution across the network, with several air traffic control centres facing significantly higher traffic levels.
“Traditional holiday destinations in the south of Europe were i.n high demand. In the southeast this was compounded by the effect of changing traffic patterns asa result of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine as well as geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
Eurocontrol said: “Beyond 2025, a deeper structural reform is needed to face medium to long term challenges, such as the expected traffic growth and the effects of climate change.”