How have air traffic congestion and flight delays in Europe this summer compared with 2018, when it was a nightmare? It was important to us to not reduce our planned spare capacity, despite the challenges we have had with the [Boeing] 737 MAX grounding. In the end, the ATC framework conditions in Europe have changed only marginally, although we are not experiencing the huge delays that we saw last year and which where mainly caused by ATC strikes in France. However, we used to be able to reach punctuality levels of more than 80% during the high season years ago. Despite largely unchanged flight plans, it is now almost impossible to reach that type of on-time performance. We plan in a lot of time buffers, have very realistic schedules and we also work with 55 minute turnaround times, where others are having 30 or 35 minutes. So everything is planned generously.
展开▼
