Europe warns of increasing flight delays due to fighting in Ukraine

The situation with flight delays could become the most stressful in a decade due to growing demand and shrinking airspace available, Eurocontrol said.warned of "huge problems"

Passengers on flights in Europe in 2023 will face more serious disruptions, one of the reasons will be the heavy congestion of the sky after the closure of the airspaces of RUSSIA and Ukraine and the recovery in demand after the CORONAVIRUS pandemic. This was warned by the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol), writes the Financial Times.

“We foresee the risk of serious delays in the management of air [traffic] flows,” the organization said in a statement.

Eurocontrol assured that it is working closely with airports and airlines to minimize delays, including by reorganizing some air zones and formulating proposals for route adjustments. According to the organization, this year the level of air travel will be 92% of the level of pre-pandemic 2019 (in 2022 it was 83%). This dynamic will create "enormous challenges in terms of matching capacity to demand." In December, Eurocontrol considered that the situation would become the most difficult in a decade.

European airlines have access to only 80% of the usual area for flights due to the closure of the airspace of Russia and Ukraine, this crowding "will increase the pressure on fragmented airspace," Andrew Charlton, DIRECTOR of the consulting company Aviation Advocacy, told the publication.

Analysts named the most popular air destinations for Russians in January Society

Ukraine closed the airspace for civil aviation on the morning of February 24, after the entry of Russian troops into this country. The European Union, among the sanctions against Russia, banned the use of its airspace by Russian airlines, Moscow took similar measures against European companies.

Which European countries did Russians fly

to Before the pandemic, in 2019, according to the FSB border service, 16.6 million Russians visited the EU countries. The statistics took into account any trips, including tourist, private, business, work and study. Most of the inhabitants of Russia visited Finland (3.9 million), Estonia (1.9 million), Germany (1.4 million) and Italy (1.4 million) that year.

In 2020, when international flights were interrupted at the end of March due to the spread of covid-19 and European countries were closed, the flow of Russians to European countries fell 4.8 times, to 3.4 million people. At the end of 2021, 3.2 million Russians visited European countries, and most of all - in Cyprus (560.7 thousand), Finland (498.2 thousand) and Germany (309.2 thousand).

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