Commercial flights across the European Union kept climbing in summer 2026, even as the Middle East crisis pushed jet fuel prices sharply higher. Eurostat counted 708,980 commercial flights in August, up 2.3% on August 2025 and 5.7% above August 2024, which completed a summer in which every month beat last year’s level. June brought 662,480 flights, up 2.1%, and July peaked at 709,931, up 2.8%, so the three months together passed 2 million.

The August picture was uneven. Commercial flights rose in 19 member states and fell in eight. Slovakia posted the biggest jump at 37%, roughly 1,325 extra flights, followed by Malta at 12.4% and Estonia at 8.3%. In absolute terms Spain added the most, with about 9,600 more flights, ahead of Italy with 8,128. Austria recorded the steepest drop at 4.7%, while Cyprus lost 3% and Germany 2.4%.

Fares moved in a different direction. Eurostat’s price data for August show passenger air transport prices fell 0.4% across the EU compared with a year earlier. That average hides wide gaps. Airfares rose 16.3% in Greece and 14.4% in Ireland, but dropped 61.2% in Slovakia and 15.8% in Spain, while Lithuania slipped only 0.9%. Ten member states recorded declines overall.

The link between those two series is capacity. Where airlines added routes, as in Slovakia and Spain, fares fell, and where seats stayed scarce or demand outran supply, travellers paid more. Slovakia shows the pattern at its extreme, because a 37% jump in commercial flights coincided with fares falling by more than 60%.

Package holidays told another story. Prices rose 3.2% in August, in line with the 3.2% overall inflation reported for the month. Belgium led with a 16.2% increase, followed by Portugal at 14.3%, Sweden at 12.8%, Lithuania at 12.3% and Romania at 11.9%. Estonia saw a 21.1% fall, and Spain and Italy recorded declines of 5.2% and 4.8%. Eurostat also reported that fuel and lubricant prices for personal transport rose 23.8% in August, a reminder that travel costs shifted well beyond flights.

Airlines face the harder arithmetic. EUROCONTROL put the average European jet fuel price in August at $3.86 per gallon, 71% above its level before the Middle East crisis. IATA forecast in June that European carriers’ combined net profit would fall from about $13 billion in 2025 to $9.6 billion in 2026, and it estimated that airlines had hedged around 70% of their fuel needs before the crisis began. Hedges expire, so higher costs are likely to reach fares eventually.

For now, the data suggest that cheap capacity has cushioned passengers. The test for winter 2026 is whether commercial flights keep growing once hedging protection fades, or whether the 0.4% fall in airfares proves to be a summer exception rather than a trend.