UK airports enjoy record flight punctuality for first quarter of 2014

• 84% of scheduled flights landed ‘on-time’ at UK airports in the first quarter of 2014.
• On-time performance was six percentage points higher than the same period in 2013.
• All 10 airports monitored saw punctuality improvements.
• Latest CAA figures show the best first quarter on-time performance since records began.

UK airports have landed the best ever first quarter on-time performance with 84% of scheduled flights ‘on-time’.

The latest data shows that between January and March 2014, overall on-time performance was six percentage points higher than the same period in 2014, making this the best first quarter since records began in 1992.

The five biggest London airports, Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City, saw an overall increase of eight percentage points of on-time flights as a proportion of total scheduled flights, rising from 76% to 84%.

And the five other airports monitored, Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Glasgow and Newcastle, have seen an overall increase of six percentage points, from 81% to 87% of flights on-time.

Individually, all ten airports saw punctuality improvements. On-time performance increases for scheduled flights ranged from four to eight percentage points, with the biggest increase being at Newcastle, which achieved an increase of nine percentage points.

An ‘on-time’ flight is defined as departing/arriving at a UK airport either early or up to 15 minutes late. The average delay across all the monitored scheduled flights was nine minutes, which is a reduction of four minutes when compared to the first quarter of 2013.

The overall on-time performance for charter flights was 76%, which is an increase of seven percentage points, when compared with the first quarter of 2013 and the average delay fell by five minutes.

In the first quarter of 2014, 304,000 scheduled and 10,000 charter passenger flights at the ten airports were monitored for punctuality by the CAA. This represents a 2.3% increase in scheduled flights and a 10.5% fall in charter flights, compared with the same quarter in 2013.

Destinations with most flights

The busiest 75 scheduled international destinations had between 900 and 13,000 flights to and from the 10 UK airports monitored in the first quarter of 2014.

Of those, Rotterdam recorded the highest on-time performance with 91.7% and Hannover had the lowest average delay of 5.1 minutes.

Flights to and from Dubai achieved the lowest on-time performance with 63.4% and Delhi had the highest average delay of 28.3 minutes

For more information, please contact the CAA Press Office, on [email protected], or 020 7453 6030. You can follow the CAA on Twitter at @UK_CAA