Delays at European airports have reached 10.8 million minutes

“Iunfortunately, we had 10.8 million minutes of delays. This amounts to 20 and a half years of our collective lives lost in the air or on the ground, and represents a cost of around EUR 1,000 million for airlines,” said European Airlines Association’s Director-General (Airlines for Europe, A4E), Ourania Georgoutsakou, at a press conference in Brussels.

Reporting data on air traffic this summer in Europe, she pointed out that “airspace and capacity remain a problem because they are responsible for almost 50% of all delays”.

“ As long as we continue to have such low capacity levels and airspace problems across Europe, traffic will continue to grow. We are limiting ourselves by allowing this kind of problem to persist,” he warned.

Nevertheless, Ourania Georgoutsakou noted that “Europeans still need and want to travel by plane, as traffic has increased by 2.3% this summer, according to the European Union database.”.

The traffic growth estimate is on average 2% per year.

“ Therefore, it is more than time to solve this problem” of capacity, reinforced.

In a summer also marked by the entry into force of the new Entry/Exit System (EES) for the management of the borders of the European Union, “waiting lines of up to five or five and a half hours at some European airports” were recorded, according to Ourania Georgoutsakou.

“ A proper implementation of the EES system would also mean that we could plan and allocate the necessary staff and resources to ensure that there are no bottlenecks and that passengers do not sit in queues while trying to reach their destination,” she said.

A4E represents the largest airlines in Europe, including Portuguese TAP.