Airline passengers across Europe face even longer delays than last year due to air traffic control staff shortages, Michael O’Leary has warned.
On the eve of the start of the summer schedules, which begin on Sunday, the Ryanair chief executive told The Independent: “It will be worse than last summer, particularly at weekends.
“Europe needs to fix what is a broken air traffic control system which we pay ridiculously expensive fees for.
“The US airlines in North America get air traffic control service provided for nothing.”
“If Mr Trump wants to demonstrate how poor the European Union has been in the last decade, all he has to do is to point to the abject failure of the ‘Single European Sky’.”
This initiative, launched in 2004, was intended to “tackle the fragmentation of European airspace” and “improve performance from the safety, capacity, cost-efficiency and environmental perspectives”.
But Mr O’Leary called it a “bullshit policy that has not made one centimetre of progress in 20 years despite over €20bn spent on it”.
He said: “We and our customers are facing increasing ATC [air traffic control] delays. They have increased by 50 per cent since Covid in the last five years.
“I wouldn’t object to those higher fees if we were getting an acceptable service. And yet last year, in 2024, we suffered record ATC delays.
“Major ANSP [air-navigation service providers] providers all over Europe have admitted to us that they are understaffed and that the ATC delays this summer will be worse than they were last summer.
“So we’re paying increased fees for a service that’s broke. It’s unacceptable.”
Eurocontrol, the pan-European air traffic management service based in Brussels, reported this week: “En-route air traffic flow management delays in 2024 reached their highest level in decades, averaging 2.13 minutes per flight.
“The delays were driven by a limited number of capacity-constrained Area Control Centres and an increase in weather-related disruptions—a trend that could worsen in 2025.”
Dr Peter Whysall, who reviewed air traffic management (ATM) for Eurocontrol, called the constraints “a cause for concern” and said performance is “likely to get worse unless structural issues are addressed”.
He said: “In 2024, ATM-related delays reached their worst level for decades, 2.13 minutes per flight, and may get even worse in 2025.”
The European Commission says: “Insufficient airspace capacity, as seen in recent years, leads to long delays and difficulties for passengers.
“These delays affect the efficiency of the entire air transport system. Delays are the cause of additional costs for airlines, and they increase the sector’s carbon footprint with additional emissions from aircraft flying more fuel-inefficient routes.”
Mr O’Leary even ventured that a popular flight-tracking service could help out. “Flightradar24 could provide most of the air traffic control service across Europe f***ing free of charge,” he said.
Nats, the UK air traffic control service, declined to comment on the remark.
