Eurocontrol’s summer summary
Eurocontrol published on 11 September its summary for the period from 1 June to 31 August 2026. The summer brought 66 daily traffic records, including the busiest day the European network has ever seen: on Friday, 24 July, 37,659 flights operated.
Punctuality improved alongside the higher traffic. Arrival punctuality was 72.6%, 1.2 percentage points higher than in summer 2025. Waiting caused by air traffic flow management (ATFM delay) fell by 17%, to 3.27 minutes per flight.
- 35,959 average daily flights (+2.4% compared with summer 2025)
- 72.6% arrival punctuality (+1.2 percentage points)
- 3.27 minutes ATFM delay per flight (−17%)
- 681 thousand flights delayed by ATFM (21% of all flights)
Figure 1. European air traffic in summer 2026, compared with the previous summer. Source: EUROCONTROL.
The figures come with a caveat. ATFM delay measures how long flights waited because of air traffic control restrictions. Passengers did not necessarily experience this as a delay, and it does not decide the right to compensation either.
The 681 thousand delayed flights (7.4 thousand a day, 21% of all flights) therefore show how heavily the system was loaded, not the claims that will have to be paid.
What can we infer about the refund load?
With caution. What is certain is that traffic is growing: in Hungary, passenger numbers rose by 11.1% in 2025 according to Eurostat, and according to the ACI Europe report, European airports welcomed about 100 million more passengers than a year earlier. More passengers means more people affected, even if the ratios improve.
How many compensation and refund claims this means cannot be read from the Eurocontrol data. That would require airline or authority claims data, and we do not publish any in this article.
What is changing in the passenger-rights rules?
There are two separate legislative steps, and it is worth keeping them apart.
A) EU261 amendment
- 15 Jun 2026 Agreement (Council and Parliament)
- 13 Jul 2026 Final approval by the Council
- Publication + 12 months 20 days Entry into force (the publication date is not yet known)
B) Enforcement package (intermediaries, all transport modes)
- 25 Jun 2026 Provisional agreement
- Approval, entry into force Not stated in the announcement
Figure 2. Status of the two legislative steps on 24 September 2026. Source: announcements of the Council of the EU.
The amendment of Regulation EU261. The Council and the European Parliament reached an agreement on 15 June 2026, and the Council gave its final approval on 13 July. Passengers can still claim compensation if the flight arrives more than three hours late, or if it is cancelled less than 14 days before departure. The amounts stay roughly the same as now: €250 up to 1,500 km, €400 for flights within the EU and for trips between 1,500 and 3,500 km, and €600 for everything else. The amended rules enter into force 12 months and 20 days after publication in the Official Journal.
The enforcement package. This is a separate agreement that amends five sectoral regulations and applies to all transport modes. The Council and the Parliament reached a provisional agreement on it on 25 June.
The air-ticket part gives clearer rules for tickets bought through intermediaries (travel agencies, booking platforms). For a cancelled flight, the passenger gets the full amount back, including the intermediary’s fee. The deadline is seven days, or 14 days if the intermediary paid the airline from its own account. The smallest intermediaries (microenterprises) get an exemption if they inform the passenger of this at the start of the booking.
Intermediaries must explain in advance how the refund works, and airlines must publicly state whether they cooperate with them. Screen-scraping is also banned: an intermediary may not buy a ticket from an airline while concealing its own identity.