n April, there were 918,182 flights, reflecting a 5.0% traffic increase compared to April 2024. With the beginning of the summer schedules on 30 March, traffic increased week-on-week.
Total flights in April 2025 surpassed April 2019 levels for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic, reaching 101.1% of pre-pandemic figures.
The network had an average of 30,606 flights/day in April, about 1,495 flights/day more than in April 2024. The busiest day was Friday 11 April (32,661 flights), which exceeded the busiest day of April 2024 (31,500 flights). The southeast axis saw a 7.1% increase while the intra-NM southwest axis saw 4.9% growth, contributing to the overall network growth of 5.0%.
The conflict in Ukraine still affects overflights in several countries. EUROCONTROL continues to help manage the war’s impact on aviation.
All Top 20 ACCs, except Reims, had more traffic in April 2025 compared to April 2024. Reims ACC’s traffic decrease was due to on-going airspace restructuring. Ryanair was the busiest operator with, on average, 3,480 movements (+5.0%) per day followed by easyJet (1,712), Turkish Airlines (1,502), Lufthansa (1,241) and Air France (1,092). All Top 20 airports saw increased traffic compared to April 2024. The busiest airport was Istanbul airport (1,480 flights/day) followed by Amsterdam Schiphol (1,386 flights/day), London Heathrow (1,347 flights/day), Paris Charles de Gaulle (1,332 flights/day) and Frankfurt Main (1,305 flights/day).
Network departure punctuality was at 74.9% and arrival punctuality was 79.6%, both better than in April 2024. Domestic routes had a departure punctuality of 80.3%, the same level as last year. Punctuality on the southeast axis reached 76.2%, up 2.8 percentage points despite a 7.1% increase in traffic. Network first rotation departure punctuality was 83.7%, which is 1.1 p.p higher than 2024 and arrival punctuality increased by 2.1 p.p. Improving first rotation punctuality remains a key objective for the Network Manager (NM).
There were 1,398,663 minutes of ATFM delay in April 2025, an increase of 36.4% compared to April 2024. En-route ATFM delay was 68.0% of the ATFM delay and airport was 32.0%. The average en-route ATFM delay per flight for the network was 1.0 minute in April – higher than last year. Total en-route ATFM delays increased by 86.9% and total airport ATFM delays decreased by 13.4% in April. En-route ATC capacity and staffing were the main issues. High delays were caused by ATC capacity issues in Marseille and Sevilla ACCs due to demand exceeding capacity. To a lesser degree, capacity was also an issue in Karlsruhe UAC and Barcelona ACC. ATC staffing issues impacted operations strongly in the Marseille Eastern sector group, Makedonia and Athens ACCs throughout the month.
On 28 April, Spain and Portugal experienced a significant national power failure, which resulted in 93,904 minutes of ATFM delay.
NM’s Operational Centre reduced en-route ATFM delays by 10.0% and airport ATFM delays by 9.4% through direct actions.
NM estimates that 3.0 million tonnes of fuel was burnt in the en-route flight phase in the NM area in April 2025.