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Europe's aviation industry is confronting its most acute supply shock since the pandemic, as the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz drains jet fuel reserves at airports across the continent and forces carriers to begin cutting flights weeks before the peak summer season. Airports Council International Europe, which represents airports across the European Union, warned the bloc on 9 April that unless stable transit through the Strait resumes within roughly three weeks,

Deutsche Lufthansa AG has entered the most turbulent stretch of industrial action in years, with a full week of strikes threatening to inflict significant financial damage on Europe's largest carrier and casting a shadow over what should have been a landmark centenary celebration. The Vereinigung Cockpit pilots' union launched a two-day walkout on Monday and Tuesday, grounding the majority of flights at Lufthansa's Frankfurt and Munich hubs and affecting operations across Luf

A last-minute cabin crew walkout lays bare the depth of labour tensions at Europe's largest airline group The timing could hardly have been worse. On Friday 10 April, as thousands of passengers attempted to return home from Easter holidays, cabin crew at Deutsche Lufthansa AG walked out across Germany's busiest airports, cancelling more than 520 flights and stranding an estimated 90,000 travellers at Frankfurt, Munich and a string of regional hubs. The one-day strike, called

The breakdown of one of Europe's most strategically significant aviation partnerships landed in Paris with predictable force. The United Arab Emirates has withdrawn from co-financing the Rafale F5 programme, leaving France to absorb a development bill that was always going to be uncomfortable and is now entirely its own. The immediate numbers are stark. The UAE had been expected to contribute roughly €3.5 billion toward a programme whose total remaining development cost stand

The Italy question has finally been answered. On 1 April, ITA Airways officially joined Star Alliance, completing the most visible stage of its absorption into the Lufthansa Group and drawing a definitive line under one of European aviation's longest-running sagas. The ceremony at Rome Fiumicino was brief by design. Joerg Eberhart, ITA's chief executive, stood alongside Lufthansa Group's chief commercial officer Dieter Vranckx and Star Alliance chief executive Theo Panagiotou

European aviation quietly crossed a significant threshold this week when the European Union Aviation Safety Agency indicated that the bloc's airlines had likely met, and possibly exceeded, the two per cent sustainable aviation fuel mandate for 2025. The confirmation, delivered on the eve of the March 31 reporting deadline, offers a rare moment of cautious optimism for an industry navigating one of its most demanding regulatory periods in a generation. The FuelEU Maritime mand

EASA and EUROCONTROL publish a joint action plan as satellite navigation attacks on commercial aviation reach a new intensity European aviation regulators moved on Thursday to confront one of the most persistent and underappreciated threats to commercial flight safety: the systematic jamming and spoofing of satellite navigation signals across the continent's most congested flight corridors. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency and EUROCONTROL published a joint action pla

Europe's low-cost aviation sector is facing its most complex operating environment in years, as the continuing Iran conflict drives oil prices higher and forces carriers to reassess route economics just as the summer travel season approaches. EasyJet chief executive Kenton Jarvis said this week that fuel hedging and a route network weighted heavily to Western Europe would shield the airline from the worst effects of the conflict, but warned that sustained high oil prices coul

The world's largest aircraft lessor places its biggest-ever single order with Toulouse, cementing Airbus's dominance in the global single-aisle market. AerCap Holdings, the Dublin-headquartered leasing giant, has signed a firm order with Airbus for 100 A320neo family aircraft — the largest direct purchase of its kind the Irish company has ever placed with the European manufacturer. The transaction covers 23 A320neo and 77 A321neo jets, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 20

Conflict in the Middle East is redrawing the map of long-haul aviation — and European carriers are moving fast to capitalise The suspension of scheduled services through Gulf hubs has triggered one of the most significant reconfigurations of long-haul aviation in years, forcing European carriers to expand direct Asia-Europe capacity at speed and reshaping a competitive landscape that had long been defined by Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi. With operations at Emirates, Qatar Airway

The closure of one of the world's busiest aviation corridors is forcing carriers from Frankfurt to Paris to count the cost of a conflict they cannot control When US and Israeli forces struck targets inside Iran on 28 February, the shockwaves travelled almost immediately into European airline operations centres. Within hours, the skies above the Gulf — a corridor handling tens of thousands of flights each week — had effectively closed, leaving carriers scrambling to reroute, c

Fuel costs surge and route networks fracture as airlines scramble to contain the damage. Europe's major airlines entered crisis mode this week as the escalating US-Israeli military campaign against Iran triggered the most severe disruption to global aviation since the pandemic, closing vast swathes of Middle Eastern airspace and sending jet fuel prices to their highest levels in more than two years. Shares in International Consolidated Airlines Group, the parent company of Br