UK regional airports received a boost today with Birmingham named the number one most punctual airport globally by aviation data specialists OAG.
The midlands airport was one of only three in the ‘medium’ category (5-10m departing seats a year), to achieve over a 90 per cent on-time performance (OTP) rating.
Newcastle airport was named number one in the small airports category (2.5-5m departing seats a year) with an OTP rating of 90.94 per cent.
The OTA ranking is based on 54 million flight records using full-year data from 2016. For airports to qualify there must be data for at least 80 per cent of all scheduled flights operated by an airline or airport.
The definition for on-time performance (OTP) is a flight that arrives or departs under 15 minutes of scheduled departure/arrival time.
Birmingham Airport’s CEO, Paul Kehoe, said, “To be crowned the world’s most punctual airport in 2016 is a tremendous prize, particularly in the busiest twelve months in our 77 year history.
“This achievement is a result of a team effort by the seven thousand employees and 140 companies operating at the airport - from the ground handlers to bus drivers, fuellers to caterers, and cleaners to office staff.
“We have invested £350m in the last ten years to improve the airport infrastructure and we’re currently working on a further hundred million pound development project to improve passenger facilities even further.
“These investments have helped us achieve this award because we can offer our customers an efficient service that makes us proud to be an airport that is easy to get to and easy to get through,” he said.
Airlines
Hawaiian Airlines was named the top airline for OTP with a 89.87% of flights operating on-time. This was followed by Copa Airlines (88.75%), KLM (87.89%), Qantas (87.56%) and Japan Airlines (86.74%).
KLM was the highest in EMEA followed by Flybe, Iberia, Monarch and Austrian Airlines.