UK Flights’ punctuality improves in the last quarter of 2013

Data published by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) shows that during October to December 2013, the overall on-time performance (defined as the proportion of flights arriving or departing early, or up to 15 minutes late) of scheduled flights at the ten UK airports monitored was 80%, one percentage point higher than during the fourth quarter of 2012. The average delay across all scheduled flights monitored was 12 minutes, the same as in the last quarter of 2012. However, on-time performance for charter flights increased by three percentage points and average delay fell by four minutes. Over the whole year, punctuality remained the same in 2013 as 2012, with 80% of flights on time.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, there were 324,000 scheduled and 13,000 charter passenger flights at the ten airports monitored for punctuality by the CAA. This represents a 2.7% increase in the number of scheduled flights and a 0.7% fall in the number of charter flights, compared with the same quarter in 2012.

Iain Osborne, Group Director for Regulatory Policy at the CAA, said:

“Whilst it is pleasing to see the majority of passengers arrived at their destination in good time at the end of last year, our figures show that too many people still had their flights disrupted by delays. We also know there were a number of cancellations during December that will have disrupted other passengers.

“Some severe weather clearly played a part in this, but there is still room for improvement. Airports, airlines and air traffic control service providers all have a role to play in delivering that improvement and it is vital they work together to make sure fewer passengers have their journeys disrupted by delays and cancellations.”

Scheduled Flights

On-time performance for scheduled flights at London airports increased by one percentage point to 78% and the average delay remained unchanged at 13 minutes between the fourth quarter of 2012 and the same quarter in 2013. Gatwick’s on-time performance increased by two percentage points to 79%. Heathrow, Stansted and Luton’s on-time performances increased by one percentage point to 75%, 82% and 81% respectively. London City’s on-time performance was unchanged at 87%. In addition, Heathrow and Luton’s average delay fell by one minute, while Gatwick Stansted and London City’s average delay remained unchanged, in the fourth quarter of 2013 compared with the same quarter in 2012.

At the airports outside of London monitored, both on-time performance and average delays remained unchanged at 83% and 10 minutes respectively. Compared with the same quarter in 2012, on-time performance increased at by two percentage points at Manchester and Newcastle, and by one percentage point at Edinburgh. On-time performance remained unchanged at Glasgow and fell by two percentage points at Birmingham.

Charter Flights

In the last quarter of 2013, on-time performance of charter flights increased by three percentage points to 77%. Average delay across all charter flights monitored was 15 minutes, a fall of four minutes compared with the last quarter of 2012. At airports outside of London, on-time performance increased by three percentage points to 79% and average delay fell by six minutes. However, at London airports, on-time performance and average delay remained unchanged with 73% of charter flights being early or on-time, and with an average delay of 18 minutes.

Destinations with most flights

Among the 75 scheduled international destinations with the most flights in the fourth quarter of 2013 (covering routes with between 900 and 13,300 flights in the quarter), flights to and from Rotterdam recorded the highest on-time performance of 86.4% and Berlin (Schönefeld) the lowest average delay of 8.1 minutes. Flights to and from Tel Aviv achieved the lowest on-time performance of 66.6% and Toronto the highest average delay of 20.8 minutes.