What were the 5 biggest flight disruptions of 2024?

2024 was a real doozy for flight delays and cancelations. The summer travel season was especially chaotic, with a notable rise in severe disruptions compared to previous years. That’s a lot of late, stuck or inconvenienced passengers entitled to compensation. Maybe you were one of them? In Europe, flight cancelations rose to 2.2%, up from 1.7% in 2022. Similarly, in North America, 2.1% of passengers experienced delays exceeding 3 hours, compared to 1.6% of travelers in 2022.

So now that 2024 is behind us, it’s the perfect time to take a look at what caused the biggest headaches for passengers dealing with flight disruptions last year. These are the heavy hitters.

5. WestJet mechanics strike

28 to 30 June 2024

The WestJet mechanics strike in Canada was one of the biggest and most disruptive strikes of last year.

680 workers walked off their jobs after WestJet and the Airplane Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) failed to reach a deal on improving salaries and working conditions. Over 110,000 passengers in Canada were affected — that’s a whopping 47% of the flights scheduled. It also majorly impacted flights from the US, as well as Europe, leaving a little over 1.25 million passengers stuck at terminal Limbo.

4. Hurricane Debby

3 to 5 August 2024

As Hurricane Debby hit Florida, thousands of flights were delayed, causing knock-on effects not just in the US, but also in Europe. In Florida alone, over 6,000 flights were cancelled across 3 days. That left approximately 1.5 million passengers adapting their plans on the fly.

Several major airlines including American Airlines, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, and United Airlines issued waivers in response to the cancelations, which allowed passengers to reschedule their flights without any additional fees. On top of that, the US Department of Transport also stated that passengers should receive refunds if their flights were canceled.

3. Weather related disruptions in Eastern Europe and Spain

1 July 2024

You probably wouldn’t expect Eastern European thunderstorms to affect your summer vacation in the Spanish islands. But that’s what happened in early July as those storms moved west causing heavy air traffic control issues and delayed flights. This, in turn, affected several flights across the eastern Mediterranean and Balearic Islands with around 1.65 million passengers on the runway to nowhere.

British airline, Jet2, issued a warning to their passengers to make sure they were prepared for bad roads and delays on the way to the airport.

2. Weather and air traffic issues in Norway and Switzerland

28 June 2024

A storm that swept through Switzerland caused disruptions at Zurich Airport, and flooding at Geneva Airport’s air traffic control center which led to massive flight cancelations and affected nearly 1.8 million passengers in the region. The water damaged the cooling systems of their data center, and they needed to bring in an additional diesel generator to get the systems running again. Let’s hope airline staff handed out all that great Swiss chocolate to ease the pain.

There were also traffic control issues reported in Norway, with Ryanair announcing that the issues had affected multiple European airlines in the region.

1. CrowdStrike outage

19 to 22 July 2024

The CrowdStrike outage of July 2024 will likely go down as one of the largest IT outages in history. A faulty security update crippled over 8.5 million Windows-based computers worldwide including critical systems used by airlines and airports.

This led to massive flight cancelations worldwide — in North America alone, almost 2.25 million passengers were affected. Airlines and airports struggled to make sure their flights got off the ground, rebooking passengers, issuing refunds, and, in some cases, manually writing down boarding passes with pen and paper just so travelers could fly.

Flight disruption? Make sure you know your rights

With all of these flight disruptions, it’s easy to get stressed and end up panicking over your trip getting upended.

But knowing your rights as a passenger can make a world of difference. In some cases, it’s possible to get compensation, sometimes as far back as 3 years from the day of your delay or cancellation.

For weather-related disruptions, some airlines may even waive their rescheduling fees, so be sure to check your airline’s policy.

And if your trip is impacted by strikes or technical outages like the CrowdStrike event, it helps to be proactive in contacting your airline so you can secure alternative travel arrangements. Lastly, consider travel insurance to safeguard your trip against unforeseen events.

If you’re curious about what kind of air passenger rights you have in your country, check out our easy guide so you know exactly what to expect next time you have a delay.

Flight delays happen, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept them. You may be entitled to as much as €600 in compensation if your flight was delayed, canceled or overbooked within the last three years.