A historic record, with a total of almost 69,000 flights recorded in the European skies on the weekend of 9 and 10 August, confirming that Europeans, despite spending less, are certainly traveling more, albeit on shorter trips.

Nevertheless, overall traffic at airports across Europe is so far at 99% of 2019 and up 4% compared to August last year, with Greece, yes, having long since surpassed its 2019 performance in terms of traffic growth compared to other major tourist markets in the Mediterranean, but also recording a far from negligible negative performance: Indeed, our country this August has the positive performance of being at +20% compared to 2019 for the “hot” European holiday week of August 4-10, 2025. However, along with France in first place and Spain in third place, Greece in second place, Greece also had the longest flight delays, something that many travelers who chose to fly to their holiday destinations found out in practice.

The figures come from the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, Eurocontrol, which describes the weekend of 9-10 August as the hottest ever with a total of 68,996 flights for the two days (33,987 flights on Saturday and 35,009 flights on Sunday). The reference point with the highest daily traffic in general has been recorded before the pandemic in 2019, Friday with 37,229 flights. On average for the week to 10 August 35,333 flights/day were recorded across Europe, at +4% compared to the same period in 2024.

Flights and delays

For the week 4- 10 August 2025, according to Eurocontrol data, an average of 35,332 flights per day are recorded across Europe. The UK leads the way with 6,301 daily flights, followed by Spain and Germany with 6,142 and 5,488 daily flights. Greece is also in the top 10 of Europe’s busiest countries, in seventh place with 2,708 flights on average per day, behind Turkey with 4,300 flights. Greece is 20% higher in flights compared to August 2019, with only Poland recording an even greater performance, at +25%, while major Mediterranean markets such as Spain and Italy are both at +10%, and Turkey at +16% versus 2019. The top 3 airports with the most flights during the week of August 4–10 were in Istanbul (1,628 flights/day), Amsterdam (1,445 flights/day), and Paris Charles de Gaulle (1,422 flights/day).

Eurocontrol data also reflect the delays at European airports during the particularly …active week of August 4–10, due to Europeans’ mobility, where 26% of delays were attributed to France because of capacity and staffing issues, 16% to Greece due to staffing and weather conditions, and 13% to Spain due to capacity problems resulting from high demand.

Overall across Europe, punctuality in arrivals and departures (74.9% and 66.3% respectively) was at better levels both compared to last year and to 2019. In total, 80% of delays at European airports this August were attributed to capacity and staffing issues. Specifically in Greece, August 10th was the day with the most delays at the country’s largest airport in Athens, which continues to break a new passenger traffic record every month, both because of the increase in European visitors and because Greeks are making more trips abroad. “Eleftherios Venizelos” recorded a departure punctuality rate of 48% during the period of August 4–10, lower compared to last year when the rate was above 65%.