Increase in May air traffic
The UK’s major provider of air traffic services, NATS, handled 236,539 flights in May, a 12.4% increase on April’s traffic and an increase of 0.8% on May last year.
Image courtesy NATS
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. A total of 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.”
