Passengers suffer as delays get longer
Passengers are suffering longer and more frequent flight delays when flying from UK airports, according to the Civil Aviation Authority.
Official figures show that at Heathrow more than one in four scheduled flights – 27% – are delayed, making this the worst airport for scheduled flights. Punctuality at the UK’s largest airport fell six percentage points from April to June.
Almost half of all flights to Toronto were delayed, more than on any other route, and the highest average wait was 28 minutes.
Over all 10 airports monitored, the average delay increased by one minute to 12 minutes and only 78% of scheduled flights were on-time, four percentage points lower than in the same quarter of 2011.
Punctuality on charter flights improved year on year but at 17 minutes the average delay was still considerably longer than for scheduled flights.
The CAA recorded the punctuality of 350,000 scheduled and 20,000 charter passenger flights, which represented a 0.8% increase in scheduled services and a 12.8% decrease in charter flights compared with the second quarter of 2011.
Iain Osborne, CAA group director for regulatory policy, said: "Passengers are entitled to expect a good value flight that gets them to their destination on time.
"These figures show that the majority of passengers using UK airports are receiving that level of service. However, the drop in performance for scheduled flights is a warning sign – more can be done, and we urge airports, airlines and air traffic control to work together to reverse this trend, reduce delays and ensure even more passengers reach their destination on time."
The on-time performance for scheduled flights across all London airports fell by four percentage points to 77% and the average delay increased by two minutes to 13 minutes.
Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and London City all suffered worse flight delays than in the same period of 2011, but Luton improved its on-time performance by one percentage point.
At other airports monitored, the on-time performance for scheduled flights fell overall by two percentage points and the average delay increased by one minute in the second quarter of 2012 compared with the same period in 2011.
On-time performance fell by three percentage points at Manchester and Birmingham, by two percentage points at Glasgow, by one percentage point at Edinburgh but it increased by one percentage point at Newcastle.
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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