According to AirHelp, a company specializing in the defense of the rights of air passengers, since January, more than a third of passengers have faced disruptions on flights in Portugal, which resulted in more than two million passengers affected, about 35% of the total.
The first months of 2023 were marked by strikes that affected Portugal’s aviation. The first strike of EasyJet cabin crew and several calls for strikes at TAP was eventually called off. In Europe, strikes in Germany, France, Britain, and Spain have also risked the punctuality of connections with Portugal.
When we look at the data from this year and last year for the same period, it shows that there were twice as many flights with issues this year. Over one million passengers experienced delays or cancellations in 2022. The month with the most incidents in Portugal was March, affecting around 800,000 passengers.
By region, it was in Lisbon that passengers experienced the most problems, with more than one and a half million passengers experiencing some disruption to their flight, corresponding to 41% of passengers, followed by Horta airport in the Azores, where disruptions affected 35% of total passengers. At the same time, Madeira ranks third, with almost 29% of passengers affected.
Ponta Delgada Airport, in São Miguel, Azores, was the most Portuguese punctual airport in the first four months of the year, with almost 75% of flights departing at the indicated time and about 73% of passengers not affected by any disturbance.
The good results were also typical of Porto airport, which experts consider the best national airport and where 73% of flights departed at the indicated time, while 73% of passengers did not suffer any disruption on their flight.
In the rest of Europe, the United Kingdom stands out in the negative, which ranks first among the countries with the most air passengers affected, with a total of six million passengers or 28% of the total, followed by Turkey, with about 5.5 million passengers affected (32%), and Germany, which is in third place and slightly behind, with around 4.7 million passengers (30%) taking off late or experiencing their flight canceled.
However, about five of the 25 million registered passengers in Spain also suffered flight disruption.
At the other extreme are Cyprus and Greece, which recorded the fewest delays for air travelers in the first four months of 2023, with Cyprus asserting itself as the country with the least problems, as only 17% of all air passengers departed late, followed by Greece with 18%.
According to the report, more than 40 million passengers experienced flight delays across Europe in the first four months of the year. This corresponds to 26% of all registered passengers. This is a significant deterioration compared to last year when around 20 million passengers experienced delays (18%).
Experts recall that although only about one million more passengers flew in the 2023 study period than in 2022, the delays were significantly higher.
Strikes, protests, and technical problems have negatively affected air traffic this year. In particular, the current environment of some labor conflicts has substantially impacted the numerous delays. However, experts hope the situation stays the same in the summer run-up.