What's the status of airports today?

An airport's status changes hour by hour, so the only reliable answer comes from real-time sources. In Spain, Aena publishes arrivals and departures for its 46 airports, with the status of each flight, on its website and app. For Europe as a whole, Eurocontrol's Network Operations Portal shows active regulations, airports with reduced capacity and the average delay by cause. In the United States, the FAA maintains fly.faa.gov, with delays and traffic management programs for every major airport. Flight trackers complete the picture with aircraft positions, but only official sources can explain the cause of a delay.

Weather is the leading cause: winter fog, summer afternoon thunderstorms and crosswinds reduce a runway's capacity and force wider spacing between landings. Next come air traffic control restrictions, when a sector cannot absorb the expected traffic and ground delays are assigned to departures, and one-off incidents: strikes, computer failures, runway works or a temporary closure due to a drone sighting. An airport can be "fine" at eight in the morning and rack up hours of delay by afternoon because of a storm hundreds of kilometers away.

Although day-to-day conditions vary, the trend is growth. Spain's Aena network topped 300 million passengers in 2024 (as of January 2025), more than any previous year, and Eurocontrol has warned for several summers running that European airspace capacity is tight relative to demand. It is that combination of record traffic and thin margins that makes a minor disruption quickly turn into cascading delays.