Mr. Philip Hughes:

This is where the challenge is really starting to emerge. The European meteorological service reported a 22% increase in forecasts of bad weather compared with the previous year. We also have the situation where the jet stream is now moving northwards. When aircraft are coming into the North Atlantic, we can see that piece is being disrupted. We are also seeing much more thunderstorm activity arising from this situation. The members will have seen the floods in Austria and Czechia recently. Increasingly, that is where we are trying to focus in terms of how we can help the network to deal with climate change. This is a part of the challenge for us.

The other aspect we should probably mention is that even though there were not air traffic-controlled flights, there was a work-to-rule situation in Italy that made the situation even more complex. Generally, if we have problems to the north, in Hungary or Austria, for example, we would move the aircraft further south.

That option was not available, but that is reflected in the air traffic control capacity piece.

We will go to the next slide. If members followed this in the press, they will have seen that everybody is blaming everybody else. The airlines are blaming the network manager in the ANSPs. Other people are blaming the airports or whoever else. What we have tried to do is break down the problem. I will start with green. In terms of delivery of green capacity, this is a big one. A lot of effort has gone into providing more capacity, in particular for the first rotation. If we get them off earlier during the day, they do not pick up as many delays. Some ANSPs are providing more than they promised and they have this rolling network operations plan, but some of them are not. Being honest about it, there is an element of truth in that. Ryanair is particularly angry about this, saying it has no free years and there is not enough capacity. For some countries that is true. For others, we can see where capacity plans have been achieved over the past 15 years. Some others, however, have been affected by exceptional traffic increases - as I said earlier, driven by the war in Ukraine - in terms of where the traffic is. We should note the impact of Covid and the very strong pressure. To be frank, there was also a lag in terms of recruiting air traffic controllers because a lot of them stepped down their programme during Covid. It takes three years before you get a rated air traffic controller back into the system, so there is a time lag in terms of that.

On weather, we have seen some evidence of better co-operation this year but there is a lot more to do with current procedures being insufficient and locally focused. We are planning more for 2025. As we saw earlier, more capacity will make the system more resilient. We are talking to the Americans because they have a lot of experience. Members will be aware of that if they have ever been on the east coast during the summer, as they get thunderstorm activity all the time. We are trying to look at how we can do some pre-tactical planning in terms of improving that.

The third piece is one we discussed before. It is on realistic scheduling, including turnaround times. Some of the scheduling is, frankly, not realistic. Therefore, we tend to have buffers in the system in terms of capacity. I can understand why they want to do it, to protect it, but on the other hand, that is something on which we need to work more closely with the airlines to try to squeeze as much capacity as we possibly can. I have spoken already about the first rotation.

Last but not least is disciplined flight plan execution. Basically, this means that airlines should fly to their flight plan and not take short cuts. I will give an example. If they deviate either horizontally or vertically, that capacity is not used. We have slots in the system. It is like making an appointment to go to the doctor and then not turning up. You basically build your profile based on the number of slots and then, if they do not turn up, that is lost capacity. What is worse, they probably go into a congested sector which has already been protected. It was not so much of an issue in the past because there was capacity in the network to do it, but now that we do not have that we need to be more disciplined about doing it. It also impacts safety because, obviously, if the sectors become congested, they start to impose flight restrictions. ANSPs need to monitor the rate of such incursions and then reduce their declared capacity because of predictability so the network and, ultimately, the airlines lose out again. Divergence from flight plans is up about 50% from last year, so that means that-----