The planes at the Václav Havel Airport in Prague are slightly more delayed this year than in the previous year. This is apparent from the data on delays for the first six months of this year, which was provided by Prague Airport. The most critical part of the year in terms of traffic and delays are the summer months. The airport monitors flight departure delays, but not arrivals.

“In recent years, the development is stable, broadly speaking. The numbers are not much different,” said spokeswoman of Prague Airport, Marika Janoušková. Nevertheless, the slight increase is evident in the numbers: the average delay of flights went up from 10 to 12 minutes. The share of the connections flying dropped from 84 to 80 percent for a time.

“The strikes or attacks that took place in Brussels were, of course, reflected in this,” added Janoušková. In half the cases, the reason was the already late arrival of the aircraft.

The delays are also spoken about more in the summer due to the fact that the people travelling on holiday in planes in the summer are people who do not fly in them so often, and are therefore not accustomed to the fact that delays are a normal part of air transport. In addition to more traffic, the more frequent storms that extend the flight routes of many flights further complicate the situation in the summer. Furthermore, the carriers shorten the intervals and reserve that they have at the airport for the next flight in order to maximize the utilization of aircraft.

However, after years of complaints about the frequent delays of the dominant carrier Travel Service, travel agencies are not complaining about the punctuality of its flights very much this year. “Due to the many changes to the flight schedule at the beginning of the season, Travel Service is managing traffic without major complications. Complaints about delays are only being recorded for those clients of travel agencies who only occasionally travel abroad by plane, and therefore have no idea that short flight delays are a completely standard issue worldwide, “says Kateřina Petříčková, from the Association of Czech Travel Agencies.

Carriers also mind the three-hour limit because they must compensate passengers according to the European regulation.