Let's fly again: How much the "carpets" have really disrupted air traffic Russian airports are increasingly being closed due to the threat of drone attacks, and hours-long flight delays have become commonplace over the past year. However, the vast majority of flights continue to operate despite the restrictions. FrequentFlyers.ru studied delay statistics over the past two years (from October 2024 to October 2026) to understand how much "carpeting" really affected air traffic. There are fewer short delays for Russian airlines. True, it can hardly be called good news: at the same time, the share of flights delayed by a few hours has increased. According to Alfastrovni, in October 2026, a delay of 6 hours or more was observed in 5.6% of flights tracked by Russian companies compared to 1.1% a year earlier. That's about every 18th flight in the sample instead of every 93. In October 2026, Russian airlines operated 67,736 flights. Half of them took off without delays (no delay is considered a departure later than 15 minutes from the scheduled time). Another 24.1% were delayed between 15 minutes and an hour. Thus, 74.2% of the flights had no delay at all or could still be considered non-critical. However, a year earlier there were almost 90% of such flights, and in October 2024 - 92.9%. You can of course write something like "every second flight is delayed" for the sake of hype, but without specifying the duration of the delay, it will simply be a yellow headline, which will benefit the passenger a little. There is still a significant difference between an extra 20 minutes and a 6 hour wait. And with the long delays, the situation, unfortunately, worsened significantly. In October 2025, 19,441 flights were delayed between 15 minutes and an hour, or 31% of all flights. Similar delays have now been recorded for 16,355 flights, or 24.1%. At the same time, the total number of flights increased from 62,766 to 67,736. Accordingly, there were more delays of more than an hour, their share increased from 10% to 25.8%.

Let's fly again: How much the "carpets" have really disrupted air traffic Russian airports are increasingly being closed due to the threat of drone attacks, and hours-long flight delays have become commonplace over the past year. However, the vast majority of flights continue to operate despite the restrictions. FrequentFlyers.ru studied delay statistics over the past two years (from October 2024 to October 2026) to understand how much "carpeting" really affected air traffic. There are fewer short delays for Russian airlines. True, it can hardly be called good news: at the same time, the share of flights delayed by a few hours has increased. According to Alfastrovni, in October 2026, a delay of 6 hours or more was observed in 5.6% of flights tracked by Russian companies compared to 1.1% a year earlier. That's about every 18th flight in the sample instead of every 93. In October 2026, Russian airlines operated 67,736 flights. Half of them took off without delays (no delay is considered a departure later than 15 minutes from the scheduled time). Another 24.1% were delayed between 15 minutes and an hour. Thus, 74.2% of the flights had no delay at all or could still be considered non-critical. However, a year earlier there were almost 90% of such flights, and in October 2024 - 92.9%. You can of course write something like "every second flight is delayed" for the sake of hype, but without specifying the duration of the delay, it will simply be a yellow headline, which will benefit the passenger a little. There is still a significant difference between an extra 20 minutes and a 6 hour wait. And with the long delays, the situation, unfortunately, worsened significantly. In October 2025, 19,441 flights were delayed between 15 minutes and an hour, or 31% of all flights. Similar delays have now been recorded for 16,355 flights, or 24.1%. At the same time, the total number of flights increased from 62,766 to 67,736. Accordingly, there were more delays of more than an hour, their share increased from 10% to 25.8%.