NATS records busiest day for air traffic since pandemic

Air traffic service provider NATS recorded its busiest day since 2019 last month, with 8,238 movements on Monday 15 July.

It’s the clearest sign yet that the industry is almost back to pre-pandemic levels, said the Hampshire firm.

UK air traffic increased by 3.3 per cent this July over the same month last year, with 242,229 movements in UK airspace – just four per cent lower than in July 2019.

Non-transatlantic air traffic particularly picked up with the arrival of peak holiday season.

The strongest growth in July was in routes to Turkey (19 per cent) and the Canary Islands (11 per cent), although the busiest destinations were still Spain, Italy and France.

NATS handled almost 24 per cent of European traffic in July, according to air traffic management organisation Eurocontrol.

Kathryn Leahy, chief operations officer at NATS, said: “July was a really busy month, with the Olympics starting in Paris, and just before that, the global IT outage which affected many airlines and airports for some days.

“Our team pulled out all the stops to support them as they dealt with both these major events which inevitably had an impact on their schedules.

“We’re now in the peak holiday season and expect air traffic to sustain the current levels throughout the next month.”