Mr. Philip Hughes:

It is a significant impact.

The next slide reflects what I term the stakeholder reaction. Some members will have seen this in the news or in various forums - I think Michael O'Leary was before this committee. To be fair, they have a point. ATC services in Europe are at the worst levels ever due to mismanagement of European ATC. A4E wanted a much better match between capacity and demand to prevent air traffic controllers being in the wrong place at the wrong time. EasyJet was the same. Then, there is the petition, "Air traffic control ruined my holiday". A lot of pressure has been brought on politically at Commission level and at European level, where they would like to see and execute change. It reflects a lot of the frustrations because they are at the sharp end of this particular process in dealing with passengers. The situation is clearly bad and it is not just the airlines grandstanding, so to speak. Even though some work has been done, more is required. One needs to bear in mind it is not just the cost of delays, there are longer routes, less fuel-efficient routes and more emissions. That is where it is important. I am looking at some data on airline-reported figures for air traffic flow management, ATFM, route delays. It was 5.9 minutes in July and airline delays were about 5.4 minutes. Even with the average number I provided before, July was a particularly bad month.