A special report by Eurocontrol, the body responsible for air traffic in Europe, reveals the list of major airports with the lowest scores when it comes to takeoff accuracy.
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According to the report, which did not include the airports in Israel, many airports, to which quite a few Israelis fly and from, are on the unflattering list. About half of the flights in Europe took off late last summer and about 7% of them were canceled, that is, about 2,000 flights that were canceled every day. This is a very significant increase compared to the data for 2019, when only about 3.5% of all flights were canceled.
Passengers in Israel (archive), photo: Yossi Zeliger
Can't be precise
The airports in Lisbon and Frankfurt received the lowest scores among the major airports in Europe, with a little more than half of the flights that took off from them on time in all of 2022. The general figure in Europe for last year is about two-thirds of the flights that take off on time, a figure that is a little more encouraging than the busy summer period that we mentioned at the beginning of the article.
In the third and undistinguished place is the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, with 56.8% accuracy.
In fourth place - London's Gatwick Airport, with 57.5% accuracy in take-offs.
Two airports that many Israelis know closely hold fifth and sixth place with only 60% accuracy, meaning that only 6 out of 10 flights depart from them on time: Heathrow in London and Schiphol in Amsterdam.
An airport that received a relatively high score is Barajas in Madrid with 81% accuracy, much higher than most major airports on the continent.
The heavy shortage of manpower is not only evident in Israel, but also in many airports around the world.
At the moment, there doesn't seem to be a solution to the issue.
According to the Euronews website, the closure of the airspace over Russia and Ukraine also limits traffic on the continent, which adds to the difficulties of the airlines, when about 650 flights a day are forced to change routes following the war between the two countries.
Passengers at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, photo: AFP.
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