NATS, the UK’s major provider of air traffic services, has announced the safe handling of 236,539 flights in May 2026 – a 12.4% increase on April’s traffic, and an increase of 0.8% on May last year.
New figures released by Eurocontrol show that NATS handled 24.5% of all of Europe’s traffic in May, and was accountable for 3.8% of the continent’s overall delay.
Data also shows that 97.4% of all flights received no NATS-attributable delay, with the 2.6% of flights which had a NATS-attributable delay experiencing an average of 11.9 minutes.
The market with the most growth was transatlantic overflights, which saw an increase by 4.1% year on year whilst non-transatlantic overflights decreased by 2.2%.
Steve Fox, Director Operations Control, said:I’m pleased that we continue to maintain punctuality as flight numbers are increasing. During May half term, we handled over 8,287 flights in a single day, just short of last summer’s peak.
We will see more days like that through June, July and August, when sustained high demand will become the norm, with 8,000-plus flight days a regular feature.
