Kiwi.com Flight Disruptions Report: July 2025
Kiwi.com, a global travel technology company focused on solving the key anxieties of air travel, has released the second edition of its monthly Flight Disruption Report.
In July 2025, flight disruptions affected 2.78% of all passengers, almost double the 1.8% seen in July 2024. Yet, despite peak-season traffic, the rate was lower than in June, marking a rare reversal of the usual summer trend. Drawing on its global flight data, Kiwi.com also identified the main drivers behind these mid-season disruptions.
Top causes of flight disruptions1 | July 2025
| KEY CAUSES OF DISRUPTIONS | % OF TOTAL 2025 | % OF TOTAL 2024 | YoY ⬆️⬇️ |
| Geopolitics/War/Terrorism – Middle East conflict | 53.12% | 13.02% | 308% |
| Airline Operational Issues | 1.15% | 0.91% | 26% |
| Government Regulations | 0.17% | 0.00% | — |
| Weather | 0.11% | 2.22% | -95% |
| Industrial Action | 0.08% | 10.88% | -99% |
| Uncategorized | 0.00% | 47.08% | -100% |
| Airport Closures | 0.00% | 0.99% | -100% |
| Natural Disasters | 0.00% | 2.00% | -100% |
1) Based on number of Kiwi.com passengers affected by flight disruptions
Conflict in the Middle East remains the biggest cause of flight disruptions, accounting for 53.12% of the total number of Kiwi.com customers affected by flight disruptions worldwide. However, its impact on the global flight landscape is receding, with the disruption rate of 39.5% in the most impacted Middle East countries* — 14 percentage points lower than it was in June.
Numerous industrial actions were reported in Europe such as baggage handling strike in Portugal or the partial ATC strike in Marseille, and amounted to 33% of events, Kiwi.com tracked due to their disruptive potential. However, their impact on customers was lower than expected. The share of major disruptions caused by various ATC, airport, or airline staff fell to 0.08%, which is significantly lower than 10% last year and 8% in June.
Commenting on the findings and the impacts of disruptions for Kiwi.com customers, Oliver Dlouhý, Kiwi.com co-founder and CEO, shared: “While headlines often focus on strikes or record passenger numbers, our data shows these are challenges the industry is largely equipped to manage. What truly disrupts travel on a large scale are black swan events, such as the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. That said, with almost twice as many travelers affected by disruptions compared to last year, our commitment is stronger than ever to solving this problem. Through the Kiwi.com Guarantee, we continue to address one of the biggest anxieties in air travel: knowing that if a flight is canceled, our customers will have an instant solution to the issue.”
Kiwi.com customer, Laurentiu Tudorache from Romania, had first hand experience of such an issue and shared his experience with the Kiwi.com Guarantee when planning a trip to Portugal with a stopover in Zurich: “My trip to Portugal had one stop, and one of the corresponding flights got rescheduled so that instead of a 1-hour stop, I would have to accept an 8-hour stop, which didn’t seem reasonable to me. I used Kiwi.com Guarantee to change the destination, which was very useful!”
Instead of spending almost a full day of their holiday at an airport, the customer used the instant credit refund, booked a new itinerary, and enjoyed a week in another attractive holiday destination in Europe.
– ends –
NOTES FOR EDITORS
*Countries in the Middle East most affected by flight disruptions: Israel, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Qatar
The Kiwi.com Guarantee gives travelers the flexibility to receive instant credit refunds for disrupted or canceled flights—regardless of the carrier—allowing them to rebook without delay. The offering also includes automatic check-in and a unified Kiwi.com Live Boarding Pass that personalizes all essential itinerary information for travelers in one seamless experience. “The Kiwi.com Guarantee is not just a product improvement, it is an innovation to bring solutions to some of the key anxieties around air travel that our customers face,” said Oliver Dlouhý, Co-founder and CEO. “Only in July, we supported our customers during disruptions by providing them with almost half a million euros to replace their disrupted itineraries,” Dlouhý concluded.
Categorization of causes of flight disruptions
For the purposes of this report and further internal analyses, the various events causing flight disruptions are grouped into multiple categories, which are designed to be as comprehensive as possible. In July, the following types of disruption events were recorded by Kiwi.com:
- Geopolitics/War/Terrorism
In July, most of the cases in Kiwi.com’s data were related to the ongoing Middle East conflict
- Industrial Action
Any disruption event caused by either airport or airline staff strikes. In July, examples of tracked events included the Helsinki airport strike, France and Argentina ATC strikes, Italy and Portugal baggage handling strikes, and the Italian national strike.
- Airline Operational Issues
This includes events such as airline insolvency resulting in flight cancellations or cancelling previously announced (and sold) routes, as was the case in July when Wizz Air suspended flights to Abu Dhabi.
- Government Regulations
For example, changes in governmental policies, such as the US president’s proclamation banning travel to the US from 12 countries signed on June 5 and going into effect on June 9, were still affecting Kiwi.com customers in July.
- Airport Closures
Such as the half-day Birmingham airport closure on July 8.
- Natural Disasters
Events such as wildfires, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, mudslides and landslides, or extreme flooding. An example covered by the July report was the eruption of the Mount Lewotobi volcano in Indonesia and the Tsunami in the Pacific.
- Uncategorized
Very rarely, events that do not fit into any of the predefined categories happen. These appear as “uncategorized” and are usually one-off events such as the global IT outage caused by CrowdStrike last year in July.
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Kiwi.com is a leading global travel tech company headquartered in the Czech Republic. Kiwi.com’s innovative algorithm enables users to find better route options and prices other search engines can’t see, performing billions of price checks per day across 95% of global flight content. 100 million searches are carried out every day on Kiwi.com’s website and partner channels.