Punctuality stays high as air traffic grows into summer

NATS, the UK’s major provider of air traffic services, safely handled 236,539 flights in May, a 12.4% increase on April’s traffic, and an increase of 0.8% on May last year.

Eurocontrol figures show that NATS handled 24.5% of Europe’s traffic in May but was accountable for only 3.8% of Europe’s overall delay. 97.4% of flights received no NATS-attributable delay; for the 2.6% of flights which had a NATS-attributable delay, the average was 11.9 minutes.

The market with most growth was transatlantic overflights which increased by 4.1% year on year. Non-transatlantic overflights decreased by 2.2%.

Steve Fox, Director Operations Control, said: “I’m pleased that we continue to maintain punctuality as flight numbers are increasing. During May half term, we handled over 8,287 flights in a single day, just short of last summer’s peak.

We will see more days like that through June, July and August, when sustained high demand will become the norm, with 8,000-plus flight days a regular feature.”