Nearly a quarter of the 1.9 million flights to and from the UK in the year ending March 2016 were delayed by 15 minutes or more, research from publication Which? has found.
Of the 449,000 flights between April 2015 and March 2016, more than 10,000 were more than three hours late. Total delays hit around 43 million passenger journeys.
Calculations are based on the overall amount of flights delayed by three hours or more from Civil Aviation Authority data.
Southend airport was named as the location where passengers were most likely to be delayed on short-haul flights.
Gatwick and Manchester airports suffered the most delays to long-haul journeys with 1.3 per cent delayed by more than three hours.
Vueling (1.9%), Loganair (1.6%) and Aurigny (1.3%) are named as the airlines with the highest percentage of delays of three hours or more to their short haul flights.
Passengers travelling with Pakistan International Airlines (4.2%), Air India (3.7%) and US Airways (2.1%) are most likely to face three hour delays on long haul flights. The average delay time for a Pakistan International Airlines flight was nearly 45 minutes.
Which? is encouraging passengers to claim compensation but warned payouts are unlikely for factors such as extreme weather or airport strikes.
Compensation is also dependent on how long the delay is and how far you are flying. Long haul travellers could be entitled to £250 (€300) if their plane landed between three or four hours late, or £510 (€600) if their flight was at least four hours behind schedule.
Passengers flying short haul are also potentially eligible to claim up to £210 (€250) if they were delayed by more than three hours.
Alex Neill, Which? director of policy and campaigns, said: “Arriving at the airport to discover your flight has been delayed is incredibly frustrating, and something thousands of holidaymakers will encounter this summer.
“We know that tens of thousands of passengers on late running flights aren’t claiming the compensation they’re due and so we encourage people to claim what they’re rightly entitled to.”
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