A France Ranked Among Europe’s Poor Performers in the Sky
The financial magistrates’ assessment leaves no room for nuance. According to the Cour des comptes, the DGAC’s capacity to route air traffic without delays or flight cancellations has deteriorated since the end of the Covid period, even as traffic has returned to pre-crisis levels. Last summer, a record for delays was reached, with an average delay of more than three minutes and thirty seconds per flight attributed to air traffic control, placing France among the “poor performers” in Europe’s skies. Eurocontrol had already sounded the alarm: the European body identified the airspace managed by DSNA, the DGAC’s operations arm, as one of the continent’s “hot spots,” with more than three minutes of delay “in-flight” per flight, a performance below the European average and still distant from 2019.
À retenir
- France alone accounts for nearly a third of European civil aviation delays
- Air traffic controllers in France work the equivalent of three days per week but have received a 16% pay raise
- The Cour des comptes envisions a radical reform: removing the civil servant status from controllers
A France Ranked Among Europe’s Poor Performers in the Sky
The verdict from the financial ombudsmen leaves no room for nuance. According to the Cour des comptes, the DGAC’s ability to dispatch air traffic without delays or flight cancellations “has deteriorated since the end of the Covid period,” even as traffic returned to pre-crisis levels. Last summer, a record for delays was recorded, with an average delay of over 3 minutes and 30 seconds per flight attributable to air traffic control, placing France among the “poor performers” in Europe’s skies. Eurocontrol had already sounded the alarm: the European body had identified the airspace managed by DSNA, the DGAC’s operational branch, as one of the continent’s “hot spots,” with more than 3 minutes of delay “en route” per flight, a performance below the European average and still far from 2019.
The bill runs into hundreds of millions of euros. In 2025, delays and cancellations attributable to air traffic control cost airlines around 800 million euros, laments the Cour des comptes in its report. A figure that even prompted Ryanair to write directly to the President of the European Commission in early July, calling for sanctions against failing air navigation service providers. For an airline that schedules its rotations to the minute, such slip-ups have a domino effect on the entire European network, much like a traffic jam on the Paris beltway that ends up delaying journeys hundreds of kilometers away. The Court is not mistaken and speaks plainly of a “European problem” and a risk of sanctions for France.
Fewer Working Hours, Wages Rising Sharply
Here lies the heart of the report, and likely its most explosive point. The magistrates scrutinized in detail the actual working time of 3,800 French air traffic controllers, and the findings are striking. The Court examined
