4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
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Staff shortages and strikes are leaving passengers and airlines frustrated. So why are there such problems in recruitment?
Industry bodies estimate over the next decade we could be short of 70,000 air traffic controllers around the world. We hear what is luring some controllers out of Europe and why others are leaving the sector all together. And what could the financial and safety implications be for passengers and airlines?
Presenter: Will Bain Producer: Josh Martin
(Photo: NATS Swanwick ops room,. NATS is a UK-based air traffic control company. Credit: NATS)
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.5 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily on the BBC World Service with me, Wilbane. |
| 0:11.7 | Today, delays and cancellations, frustrations and costs, Europe is suffering something of an air traffic control crisis. |
| 0:19.0 | If we consider the amount of delays translated into the money, |
| 0:25.3 | we can say that we didn't only hit the capacity wall, but the wall has fallen on the head. |
| 0:29.8 | And a warning that the pressure could get worse. |
| 0:32.9 | Quite a bit more worse than that, I think. |
| 0:35.0 | And again, a lot worse also means not only me being delayed to |
| 0:38.3 | arrive to my holiday destination. It's a safety concern. And if the problem can't be sold, |
| 0:43.9 | then according to the major airlines, flying could be about to get much more expensive for millions |
| 0:48.9 | of passengers. If we don't see any improvement, the consequence is going to be that airlines will have to increase airfares. |
| 0:56.6 | So today on Business Daily, we're asking, where have all Europe's air traffic controller's gone? |
| 1:05.6 | There has been major disruption at airports across the UK this evening, after all, departing flights were paused. |
| 1:12.0 | So I'm afraid it is likely there will be some delays due to airport traffic control in Europe this summer. |
| 1:16.7 | There's a shortage of air traffic controllers in Europe. |
| 1:19.1 | In Paris, there have been endless lines at airline kiosks. |
| 1:22.6 | A quarter of flights were cancelled on Thursday, impacting tens of thousands of passengers. |
| 1:27.6 | It's been another turbulent year for air travel delays and cancellations in Europe. |
| 1:32.6 | Many either caused directly by air traffic control staff shortages |
| 1:36.7 | or by strikes stemming from controllers' frustrations at their working conditions. |
| 1:41.6 | They aren't the only ones, though, who've been left frustrated. |
| 1:44.5 | The little one hasn't stopped crying. We can't push our flight back. |
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