What's happened to Europe's air traffic controllers?

Summary

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Business Daily – What's Happened to Europe's Air Traffic Controllers?

Host: Will Bain
Guests: Frederic Dalot (Vice President, International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations), Yvonne Moynihan (Wizz Air), Dr. Marina Efthemeo (Aviation Management, Dublin City University), Brendan Mulligan (AirNav Ireland)

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

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Overview

This episode of Business Daily addresses the unfolding crisis in Europe's air traffic control sector: increasing delays, widespread staff shortages, safety concerns, and the mounting impact on both airlines and passengers. Host Will Bain explores the sources of these disruptions, from recruitment and training bottlenecks to burnout and the lure of better jobs abroad. Industry insiders and experts weigh in on the systemic challenges and put forward ideas for potential solutions.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

The Scope of the Crisis

• Disruptions: This summer saw unprecedented delays and cancellations at major European airports like Paris, causing chaos for travelers (02:15, 03:09).
• Delays are caused both by direct staff shortages and industrial action in response to working conditions (02:21).
• Impact is not limited to inconvenience: Airlines face significant financial liabilities, reputational risk, and the increases in airfares could soon affect millions (01:44).

The Controller’s Perspective: Overworked and Understaffed

• Capacity and Safety:
  Frederic Dalot highlights controllers’ struggle to manage more aircraft than is safe, with one controller handling up to 20 planes at once (03:49).

  “If you don’t have enough staff, then these people will work overtime, which in turn might actually bring them to be fatigued … This is the continuous cycle that we have to go out of.”
  — Frederic Dalot [05:42]

• Fatigue: Frequent overtime, minimal breaks, and being called in on days off have created dangerous levels of fatigue—an acute risk in a safety-critical job.
• Training Bottleneck: Even as recruitment efforts ramp up, there’s not enough training capacity to meet demand (05:54).

Airline Fallout: Financial, Operational, and Reputational Costs

• Massive Losses:

  “Across Europe, from the start of the year until now, we’ve had 20 million minutes of delays attributed to air traffic management.”
  — Yvonne Moynihan [06:42]

• Wizz Air, a major low-cost carrier, reports huge payouts in passenger compensation, even for delays they did not cause (06:57).
• Reliability Crisis: Airline brands suffer when travelers are stranded, undermining their promise of hassle-free travel (08:10).

What’s Causing the Shortages?

• Outpaced Recruitment: Surging post-pandemic travel isn’t matched by controller hiring; COVID created a lag in recruitment and training (10:25).
• Aging Workforce: A retirement wave is exacerbating shortages (10:25).
• Lengthy Training:

  “To be trained to become a controller it takes two to four years. So it’s very resource intensive with high fail rates.”
  — Dr. Marina Efthemeo [10:25]

• Geopolitical Pressures: Airspace closures over Ukraine and the Middle East have shifted traffic and intensified bottlenecks in other regions (10:25).
• Global Talent War: Gulf states and parts of Asia are luring European controllers away with higher, often tax-free, salaries and better benefits (12:51).

Fragmentation & Calls for Reform

• National vs. Regional Control: Multiplicity of national bodies managing fragmented European airspace exacerbates inefficiency. Airlines argue for the European Commission to implement a “Single European Skies” regulatory regime (13:19).
• Strikes: Particularly in France, strikes can paralyze all overflights, sparking calls for pan-European strike protections (13:50).

  “…in France these flights are not exempted, whereas they are in other countries such as Spain or Italy … so essentially, they paralyze European skies.”
  — Yvonne Moynihan [13:50]

• Capacity, Not Congestion: Airlines dispute that the problem is simply ‘too many flights’; they argue it’s a lack of organizational capacity and investment (14:33).

Training and Recruitment Innovations

• Ireland’s Example: AirNav Ireland partners with Dublin City University and uses social media/school outreach to widen the talent pool (16:07).
• Competitive Packages: Despite proactive efforts and favorable employment terms in Ireland, the region finds itself competing with far higher salaries abroad (16:40).

  “We’ve been inundated with people who want to work as air traffic controllers … But we would have lost probably nine air traffic controllers this year now, so Doha, Qatar, that we just can’t compete with the salaries that are offering over there.”
  — Brendan Mulligan [16:40]

• Hands-On Outreach: Visiting schools, organizing simulation exercises, and engaging young people build early interest—while striving for gender diversity (17:28).
• Academic Partnerships: Integrating air traffic control modules and technical testing into academic degree programs to streamline the hiring pipeline (18:20).

The Urgency of the Moment

• Cost of Delays:

  "If we consider the amount of delays translated into the money value, we can say that we didn't only hit the capacity wall, but the wall has fallen on our heads... when we're talking about 2.8 billion euros equivalent for the delays, this is not a small figure."
  — Frederic Dalot [19:12]

• The crisis is now acute—without coordinated regulatory reform and significant investment in training and retention, rising costs and disruptions may soon outpace the system’s capacity to cope.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the relentless pressure controllers face:

  “…It’s a ballet that goes on 24/7 … this leads to, of course, fatigue. And this is one of the reasons why air traffic controllers can work maximum two and a half hours and then they need a minimum of 30 minutes of break.”
  — Frederic Dalot [04:16]

• The cost to airlines:

  “If we have delays which are over three hours, then we have to pay compensation … even though the airline is not actually responsible for the delay.”
  — Yvonne Moynihan [06:57]

• On the appeal of the job:

  “Everyone is fascinated by aviation. Once they come in and we put a headset on them and… have simulation exercises, they're just fascinated by it.”
  — Brendan Mulligan [18:54]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:09 | Introduction to the crisis: delays, cancellations, cost and frustration | | 03:49 | Air traffic controllers’ day-to-day capacity problems, fatigue, and burnout | | 06:42 | Airline perspective: impact of delays and compensation costs | | 10:25 | Academic view: root causes behind staffing shortages and training bottlenecks | | 12:51 | Lure of higher salaries abroad; global ‘brain drain’ of controllers | | 13:19 | Airlines’ push for regulatory harmonisation and the Single European Skies proposal | | 16:07 | Recruitment efforts in Ireland: social media, school visits, and training innovations | | 19:12 | The urgency and scale of the crisis, risk of unaffordable delays |

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Tone and Closing Thoughts

The episode blends urgency with pragmatism, balancing the frustrated voices of stranded passengers and airlines with expert insight into the systemic roots of the crisis. Solutions are possible—but require political will, long-term investment, and a Europe-wide approach. As the episode closes, listeners are left with the sense that unless change comes soon, flying in Europe will become less predictable—and much more expensive.

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Transcript

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[Will Bain]

Hello and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. With me, Will Bain Today Delays and cancellations, frustrations and costs Europe is suffering something of an air traffic control crisis.

[Frederic Dalot]

If we consider the amount of delays translated into the money, we can say that we didn't only hit the capacity wall, but the wall has fallen on.

[Will Bain]

Our heads and a warning that the pressure could get worse.

[Dr. Marina Efthemeo]

Quite a bit more worse than that, I think. And again, a lot worse also means not only me being delayed to arrive to my holiday destination. It's a safety concern.

[Will Bain]

And if the problem can't be solved, then according to the major airlines, flying could be about to get much more expensive for millions of passengers.

[Yvonne Moynihan]

If we don't see any improvement, the consequence is going to be that airlines will have to increase airfares.

[Will Bain]

So today on Business Daily, we're asking, where have all Europe's air traffic controllers gone? There has been major disruption at airports across the UK this evening after all departing flights were paused. So I'm afraid it is likely there.

[Passenger Marie]

Will be some delays due to airport traffic control in Europe this summer. There's a shortage of air traffic controllers in Europe.

[Will Bain]

In Paris, there have been endless lines at airline kiosks. A quarter of flights were canceled on Thursday, impacting tens of thousands of passengers. It's been another turbulent year for air travel delays and cancellations in Europe, many either caused directly by air traffic control staff shortages or by strikes stemming from controllers frustrations at their working conditions. They aren't the only ones though, who have been left frustrated.

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The Little one hasn't stopped crying.

[Will Bain]

We can't push our flight back.

[Passenger with kids]

It's really complicated. Complicated because we're traveling with my own three kids and my sister's two as well. They keep telling us to call a phone number. So imagine what it's like trying to make a phone call when you've got kids jumping all over the seats, bothering people, pushing the trolleys and so on. It's a complete mess.

[Passenger Marie]

Marie, we're scheduled to fly at 3:35. I've been on the plane for nearly two and a half hours and we just heard of the channel system, that it's going to be at least another 90 minutes before we get in the air.

[Will Bain]

With the number of flights increasing, the number of delays increasing and passengers frustrations increasing, it's been a tough peak summer season for Europe's air traffic controllers.

[Frederic Dalot]

Summer was very tense. The traffic increase is tremendous.

[Will Bain]

Frederic Dalot has been an air traffic controller for almost three decades. He's the vice president for Europe of the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations and is still an active air traffic controller. In the tower at Maastricht in, in.

[Frederic Dalot]

The Netherlands, one controller can have up to 20 aircraft under its supervision at the same time. And aircraft are coming into the sector and going out of the sector, but the idea is that the occupancy on that sector remains at maximum 20. Now the demand is much higher than 20. So then you have to put regulations so that you make sure that they are not more than 20 aircraft arriving in that sector. But it's extremely difficult, especially when you confronted with some weather phenomena, it means that some aircraft might be diverting, or as we work in layers, the aircraft might not be able to climb to the highest level, which increases the amount of traffic. So it's a ballet that goes on 24 7. So the pressure goes up and down and this leads to, of course, fatigue. And this is one of the reason why air traffic controllers can work maximum two and a half hours and then they need a minimum of 30 minutes of break. And this brings me to the staff shortage. If you. You have a very high demand of traffic and you need to open a certain amount of sectors, you need a certain amount of people present. If you don't have these people, then it means that you will first of all try to restrict the traffic. But all these sectors that you can open with the people you have will be at maximum capacity and complexity all day long. And the people who will be working will be working on minimum break time. And on top of this, you Might actually need to ask them to come during the off days. And that brings fatigue. And fatigue is one of the most dangerous things you can have in a safety critical environment. At the moment, the only way we can make sure that the demand we are confronted with is served is to make sure that people are working more hours. But again, it's the snake eating its tail. If people are fatigued, then they might actually fall off. They create a gap. This gap needs to be filled and as we don't have enough staff, then these people will work overtime, which in turn might actually bring them to be fatigued in the short to medium term. And this is the continuous cycle that we have to go out of. A lot of countries have addressed the issue and they are recruiting currently. But do we have enough training capacity? No, we don't.

[Will Bain]

The pressure isn't just on the controllers, though. The Hungarian airline Wizz Air is one of Europe's biggest low cost carriers. Its business model relies on making sure its planes are always on the move to be in the right place for the next takeoff and landing. So any delays can be more than just an inconvenience. They can cost the company a fortune. As one of the airline's leaders, Yvonne.

[Yvonne Moynihan]

Moynihan, explained, across Europe, from the start of the year until now, we've had 20 million minutes of delays attributed to air traffic management.

[Will Bain]

That means money. Big money, right to you guys.

[Yvonne Moynihan]

Huge money. So if we have delays which are over three hours, then we have to pay compensation, and that can be in the form of refunds of flights or between 200 and €600. In a lot of the cases, that compensation has to be paid by the airline, even though the airline is not actually responsible for the delay.

[Will Bain]

So you guys can sell the flights and you sell your seats in advance and then the goalposts are sort of changed. Air traffic control say, actually X number of planes rather than the higher number can fly through there now. And you've got to do something about that.

[Yvonne Moynihan]

Yes. So I mean, what you will find during the summer is that you could be sitting on the tarmac for, in some cases several hours and you're waiting for air traffic control to give you a new takeoff slot or landing slot, as the case may be. And it seems that across Europe there are still a number of hotspots where simply there isn't enough capacity within the air navigation provider to cater for this congestion.

[Will Bain]

I suppose beyond the money, it is a reputational issue to you guys. Your whole business model is making sure people have a great time and go off to something that they're really looking forward to doing. And if they're sat around on the tarmac, that presumably beyond the financial hit, has a reputational hit.

[Yvonne Moynihan]

Exactly. And it's frustrating for crews, it's frustrating for families in particular. And it's, as you said, it's a huge reputational issue. And of course, even if it's not the airline's fault, because the airline is so visible and it's on the front line, it is the airline that has to take the slack.

[Will Bain]

You're listening to Business Daily on the BBC World Service with me, Will Bain.

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[Will Bain]

Today, we're looking at the challenges facing Europe's air traffic control system. So what is driving all this? We zoomed out from those directly employed in the aviation sector and asked Dr. Marina Efthemeo, a professor of aviation management at Dublin City University in the Republic of Ireland.

[Dr. Marina Efthemeo]

The understaffing gets a little bit more complex than only the recruitment. So first of all, we need to remember that we have an increase in the traffic, the more people now are flying, so that means more flights. More flights means more people. So we have seen that the recruitment hasn't been keeping up with that. Definitely Covid contributed to that. During COVID there weren't any recruitment efforts even though it's not the main cause of this shortage. So we have this training pipeline constraint and we need to remember that to be trained to become a controller it takes two to four times. So it's a very resource intensive with high fail rates. Then we have seen that there is a retirement wave. Many controllers are reaching the mandatory retirement rates and the recruitment again hasn't kept up. We see issues with geopolitical situations like for example we have the war in Ukraine and also the Middle Eastern geopolitical situation. That means that a lot of traffic will sift and controllers that before weren't busy, now they're becoming more busy. So that means that there is a staffing issue in those bottlenecks there. Then when we consider also the seasonality, like a lot of people want to take their holidays during the summer resulting to, you know, people waiting, like myself when I want to go on my holidays, waiting in the taxi line for 30 minutes for the clearance of the controller. So it's like it's not that we don't always have the controllers, sometimes it's because we don't have them when we need to. It's like the water here in Ireland, you know, it's not that it doesn't rain, it doesn't rain in the places you want or the time you want.

[Will Bain]

And the problem is here that two of the issues that you've pointed to are only getting worse by the numbers, right? The industry bodies reckon that we're going to be around the world, 70 odd thousand air traffic controllers short over the next decade. And yet iata, the body that represents all the big airlines, reckons that passenger demand is also going to go up by 7 or 8% as well. So if we're already at breaking point, how much worse could it get?

[Dr. Marina Efthemeo]

Quite a bit more worse than that, I think. And again, a lot worse also means not only me being delayed to arrive to my holiday destination, it's a safety.

[Will Bain]

Concern financially as well. Is it that places like the Gulf states in Singapore you seem to be preempting. What I'm going to say here is the sort of incentives, the financial packages, the working hours, the working conditions, are they luring air traffic controllers away from centers to those centers?

[Dr. Marina Efthemeo]

We have seen an escape as we saw in the pilots in the past and still we see that in the pilots. They go to Middle east and Southeast Asia where the growth is definitely we see the same mobility with controllers. If we take the example of Saudi Arabia, for example, opening up their airspace now and opening up their tourist market, they have been loading a number of controllers with giving them tax free remuneration. So definitely, yes, we have seen also this escape.

[Will Bain]

So how do you go about trying to tackle some of those challenges? Well, the airlines certainly have their views. They think, for example, that the European Commission, the executive branch of the 27 country bloc European Union should take more control and bring rules for Europe's skies under one governing body, not the many national bodies that manage bits of airspace now. But the so called Single European Skies act has been proposed many times but is still yet to come to fruition. Yvonne Moynihan of Wizz Air thinks it's time for that to change.

[Yvonne Moynihan]

Another problem that we see are air traffic control strikes. The worst case of that is in France. So in France overflights are not protected. So that means that if you're flying from London to Barcelona, you will have to overfly France. But in France these flights are not exempted, whereas they are in other countries searches Spain or Italy if they do have strikes, for example. So what happens is you have consistent strikes throughout the summer and essentially they paralyze European skies. That is really a European issue.

[Will Bain]

It's the central problem here, not quite simply that we just have too many flights and that actually the answer is that we need fewer flights, that we're going to have to start capping flights in Europe.

[Yvonne Moynihan]

No, absolutely not. And I mean, air traffic is set to grow as well. Of course, aviation is an economic driver or an engine of economies. We don't see that it's congestion is the issue, it's more the capacity to manage it. And again, like airlines manage growth, we invest in operational robustness, we invest in systems and infrastructure. It's the same with air navigation providers. The proper funding needs to be put in place.

[Will Bain]

Whilst it seems all from the outside almost intractable, it does seem, from the way you're putting it, Yvonne, that you think this is a thing about will, that it's not impossible to do this and turn this around. It's just there isn't enough will to do that at the moment.

[Yvonne Moynihan]

The problem is that it's very much a sovereign issue for different member states, when really it should be a European project. And so what's needed is more harmonisation.

[Will Bain]

And presumably if that doesn't happen, you're going to have to look at prices because you can't keep absorbing that level of fine.

[Yvonne Moynihan]

Presumably, ultimately, yes. If we don't see any improvement, the consequence is going to be airlines will have to increase airfares.

[Will Bain]

Procedurally, it may help, but ultimately it doesn't seem to solve the root problem. Recruiting and training more air traffic controllers. One centre, though, is trying to crack that. Air nav. Ireland, Ireland's national air traffic control operator, has been working with Professor F themeos University, Dublin City University, as well as turning to the power of social media to try and cast their net wider in the hunt for new staff, trying.

[Passenger Marie]

To convince people to become air traffic controllers. You start training at 19 and after two years you're fully trained. How much money do you think you're making just out the gap?

[Dr. Marina Efthemeo]

15, 20 or an hour?

[Brendan Mulligan]

40 grand a year?

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40,000?

[Passenger Marie]

30 grand?

[Will Bain]

Yeah, around that. 20.

[Passenger Marie]

20 grand. After your two years of training, you're on 52 grand a year. I didn't know that.

[Will Bain]

Now, see, now I'm in. I'm convinced.

[Passenger Marie]

Oh, there's also over 30 days holidays.

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[Will Bain]

Brendan Mulligan is AirNav Ireland's Deputy Chief executive.

[Brendan Mulligan]

We are short at the moment, but that's primarily because we're just, we're playing catch up. We're like, we've been inundated with people who want to work as air traffic controllers, so there's no shortage of applications. Our path rates have dropped a little bit and then we're seeing kind of aggressive recruitment campaigns, we say from the Middle East. So we would have lost probably nine air traffic controllers this year now, so Doha, Qatar, that we just can't compete with the salaries that are offering over there. But overall, I say we're happy that from an area of Ireland perspective, we're doing all we can. We have very favorable and competitive terms and conditions of employment and other supports like good pension scheme arrangements, good time off arrangements and very, very good promotional opportunities. So we think we are addressing those retention issues.

[Will Bain]

You're extremely proactive as well. They want you to drive those applications.

[Brendan Mulligan]

Very, very much so. We spend a lot of time and energy with our colleagues in corporate affairs, certainly on our social media, and we do a lot then with schools and colleges. So we will visit secondary level schools and we'll visit those colleges with air traffic controllers and engineers promoting careers within air. And our Ireland, we also target transition year students. These are students in a gap year before they go to do their final year in secondary school. And so we Promote again careers there. So we bring the transition year students in, give them a two or three day course. You'll see all the careers that are available here. So hop today will maybe consider a career when they finish secondary school. I mean, I will split them 50, 50 between boys and girls because we want to try and increase the female number participation numbers in our employment levels as well. What we do in terms of the pipeline, if you like. So we're working very closely with Dublin City University, so they have an aviation management degree. So we're working to develop their air traffic control component of that. So we would hope to replicate our computer based testing that we do currently on our student controller program into their academic program so that when the students go through that degree program and pass those technical tests, they will get a pass straight through onto our student controller program subject to medical clearance and reference checks and security checks and all that. So that really is a very, very proactive pipeline for us then to get.

[Will Bain]

Students with those younger kids. What is it that you find? Is there something that's kind of a hook for them? Is there something that across the board, you know, is going to be a real crowd pleaser?

[Brendan Mulligan]

I think everyone is fascinated by aviation. Once they come in and we put a headset on them and you know, we have simulation exercises and that type of stuff, they're just fascinated by it.

[Will Bain]

So there are attempts to reverse the trend. But according to Frederic Deleuze, air traffic controller in Maastricht, the situation is now urgent.

[Frederic Dalot]

We have already hit the capacity wall last year. If we consider the amount of delays translated into the money value, we can say that we didn't only hit the capacity wall, but the wall has fallen on our heads. Because when we're talking about 2.8 billion equivalent, billion euros equivalent for the delays, this is not a small figure. And if we want to continue to suffer this amount of delays, then at one stage it's not going to be affordable.

[Will Bain]

Frederic Deleuze, Vice president for Europe for the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers Associations bringing us just about to the end of this edition of Business Daily. With me, Will Bain. The producer was Josh Martin. And remember to never miss an episode. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast. Just search for BBC Business Daily, wherever you get yours from.