EYE-OPENING new figures have lifted the lid on Spain’s best and worst airports for delays and cancellations.
According to data crunched by boffins at AirHelp – an online service that helps airline passengers apply for compensation – more than one in four flights taking off from Spanish airports last year were either delayed or cancelled.
That means more than 34 million passengers were impacted by disruption, of whom around 1.25 million were entitled to financial compensation under EU law.
In total, Spanish airports served nearly 140 million passengers in 2025 on more than 950,000 different flights – the most registered journeys for any country in the European Union.
In Spain, Palma de Mallorca airport was the worst culprit, with around 34 per cent of flights suffering disruption last year.
In this case, heavy rain and storms at the back end of 2025 likely played a significant part, causing lengthy delays and forcing a significant number of cancellations.
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Other factors are also at play, with Ryanair reporting that over six million passengers were delayed between January and September 2025 owing to staffing and management issues afflicting Spain’s air traffic control services.
Palma de Mallorca was closely followed on the naughty list by Reus (30.8 per cent) and Murcia (28.5 per cent).
At Spain’s two busiest airports – Madrid-Barajas and Barcelona El-Prat – around 77 per cent of flights departed on time.
On the other end of the scale, Asturias was the best-performing airport in Spain with 89 per cent of flights taking off on schedule.
In terms of major travel hubs, Bilbao ranked as the most impressive with just 14 per cent of departures failing to jet off on time.
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