July hots up with record traffic levels

Last month marked the busiest day since 2019 for UK air traffic, with 8,538 flights using UK airspace on Friday July 17, just 50 short of the record set before the pandemic. July also marked the busiest weekend so far this year, with more than 16,000 flights over July 11/12.

Overall for the month NATS, the UK’s major provider of air traffic services, safely handled 253, 353 flights, an increase of 5.1% on June’s traffic and an increase of 2.1% on July last year.

Eurocontrol figures show that NATS handled 23.4% of Europe’s traffic in July but was accountable for only 3.5% of Europe’s overall delay.  96.3% of flights received no NATS-attributable delay; for the 3.7% of flights which had a NATS-attributable delay, the average was 13.6 minutes.

The market with most growth was transatlantic overflights which increased by 3% year on year with a notable growth in flights between the USA and Europe, likely driven by the World Cup including 15% for Turkey, 9% for Italy and 7% for Germany. The market with least growth was transatlantic arrivals and departures, which decreased by 2.1% although some markets showed growth – notably Jamaica/UK which surged by 14%.

Steve Fox, Director Operations Control, said:

“Last month was really busy with the start of English school summer holidays and it’s no surprise to see that areas of our airspace are at record high levels. Add in the World Cup, Commonwealth Games, Farnborough Air Show and the British Grand Prix, you can see we’re now in the peak of the summer season.  Our focus is on making sure that we always keep the skies safe and that everyone can get where they want to be as smoothly and as punctually as possible.”