Thirty per cent of flights in Spain were delayed in 2025, ten points more than last year, making punctuality the main problem for passengers and one of the biggest challenges for airlines. According to the year-end analysis carried out by the specialist website Flightright, delays have increased significantly compared to the previous year, despite the country having managed to slightly reduce its cancellation rate.
30.28% of flights in Spain were delayed in 2025, a figure significantly higher than the 19.05% recorded in 2024. In absolute terms, this translates into 300,369 delayed flights, which is 107,143 more operations affected than the previous year. This trend reflects a clear decline in punctuality and a direct impact on passenger experience, placing Spain in an intermediate position within the European context, where approximately one in three flights departed late.
By country, Portugal (41.57%), Ireland (40.32%) and Greece (38.36%) topped the ranking for unpunctuality on the continent. At the opposite end of the scale, the most punctual countries were Norway (20.20%), Sweden (23.66%) and Denmark (24.87%). In terms of cancellations, Spain slightly improved its record, going from a rate of 0.31% in 2024 to 0.29% in 2025.
However, despite this technical improvement, the country has fallen from second to fifth place in the European reliability ranking, as other markets have achieved more drastic reductions. Turkey (0.13%), Romania (0.14%) and Poland (0.24%) ranked as the countries with the fewest cancellations, while Finland (1.76%) and the Netherlands (1.45%) were the most affected.
The infrastructure analysis highlights the efficiency of two Spanish airports, which are among the top five in Europe in terms of reliability. Madrid-Barajas Airport had a cancellation rate of 0.20%, surpassed only by London-Stansted (0.10%) and Warsaw-Chopin (0.16%). Malaga-Costa del Sol Airport rounded off the top five with a rate of 0.30%, while at the other end of the scale, Helsinki-Vantaa recorded the highest rate of cancelled flights at 1.87%.
In terms of airlines, Ryanair ranked as the airline with the lowest cancellation rate among the ten with the highest flight volume, at 0.23%. It was followed by Austrian Airlines (0.50%), easyJet (0.79%), Vueling (0.81%) and Scandinavian Airlines (0.82%). In contrast, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines recorded the worst reliability figures with 2.30% of flights cancelled, followed by Air France (1.40%) and British Airways (1.18%).
Given this uneven picture, Flightright legal expert Lucía Cegarra stressed that, despite progress in some markets, incidents remain commonplace in European air transport. Cegarra stressed that it is ‘essential’ for passengers to know their rights and have a solid legal framework in place that allows them to claim compensation for these unforeseen events, which continue to represent a widespread challenge for the sector.