We have been living in troubled times for years by now. This morning (30th Apr) the first info on oil price was about $122/barrel, similar to what we had experienced in July 2022 after the early months of the war in Ukraine. It was $60 just a couple of months ago (before 28th Feb 2026, which marked the beginning of the attack to Iran).
This situation has generated an immediate increase of the fuel cost which is seriously affecting individuals and businesses which, in particular for freight transport, means additional increase of food prices. For families this means a doubly combined effect of having not only more to pay when fuelling private cars, but also pay more when shopping at groceries and supermarkets.
Closely related to this latest crisis, the “fuel jets” issue arose as caused by the scarcity of oil allowed to go through the Hormuz strait and this is going to affect air transport (either cost or availability or both). During a recent interview to the Ryanair CEO, Michael O’Leary said they are going to have reserves until end of May 2026, then “we will see”.
Other air companies decided to reduce their offer by cutting down the number of operated flights (Lufthansa and KLM, for instance) whereas some others have increase the so-called “ancillary services” such as preferred seat, trolleys weight, and ways of travelling with them. Also changing flight dates or names have increased in price, making in practice uneconomical any change and inducing passengers to buy a new ticket instead of modifying the existing one.
Ryanair and Easyjet have already adopted this philosophy well before this situation occurred. If you buy a ticket costing £17 (for instance) and then you have to pay £45 to change its date – plus paying the integration of the delta regarding the new price for the chosen date – it is definitely better to buy a new ticket (generating a good income to the carrier which flies you once while being paid twice).
Well, this is the current, uncertain, and fragile situation to which more problems add up: the continuous (and sometimes heavy) delays affecting the majority of flights operated.
It is very hard to plan a journey by air as we used to do in the past. Nowadays, there are several causes of delays: ATC (Air Traffic Control) personnel shortage, weather conditions (frequently harsh due to the climate change effects), technical issues, strikes, etc.. All these lead to more problems: max crews’ operating time that is often consumed by the issues mentioned before. Therefore, when a fresh crew doesn’t arrive on time, this contributes to further delays.
I am a very frequent flyer as I take about 150 flights per year, an average of 3 flights per week. I fly within Europe and this is where most of the problems happen. As a matter of fact, intercontinental services are definitely more reliable than Europe-bound services.
Ryanair, for instance, claims to have 90% of its services performing on time. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. The recent experience I had last Monday 27th Apr where I had to fly from London Gatwick to Dublin, an aircraft technical problem delayed our flight by 1h20′ (exactly the same duration as the scheduled fly time). My return on Tuesday 28th Apr from Dublin to London Stansted “enjoyed” 55 mins of delay due to ATC shortage of Stansted personnel (but I saw that also the flight from Dublin to Gatwick showed 30-min delay). My experience was 100% journeys NOT on time! And this time was not the worst one…
By the way, there are airports in Europe – and Dublin (at least from Terminal 1) is one of them – where delays are quite the normality.
The message I would like to convey in this editorial – to not frequent flyers in particular – is no longer possible to make precise plans (like in the past) about taking an early morning flight to participate in a 10:00am meeting (in main capital cities, of course, where public transport is good and efficient). Now you need to add a generous buffer time in your travel plans, if you don’t want to miss that meeting.
Just to make up your mind, a commuting journey from Central London to Central Dublin (whose fly time is about 1h20′) can today easily take at least 6-7 hours in total (each way, of course). So, if you need to travel by air regularly to a certain destination on business, I would advise – if possible – to spend one night more and travel one time less to compensate the overall time spent on travelling.
In one of my next editorials I will explain how to build up an efficient multi-modal travelling that include only public transport. In the end, we are all in favour of travelling sustainably, aren’t we?
Stefano Mainero
EPN Consulting and EPN Consulting Research and Innovation Founder & CEO
Article written by human beings without any use of AI. EPN Consulting Ltd. copyright 2026
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