Flight punctuality at UK airports fell in the second quarter of 2014 compared to the same period last year, a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) study has found.
On-time performance of scheduled flights was 78 per cent, 3 per cent lower than the second quarter of 2013.
The five biggest airports, Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City, saw on-time scheduled flights fall from 84 to 81 per cent.
The CAA study saw the 10 largest UK airports suffer “punctuality deterioration” – the biggest fall being at Luton, where the decline was 8 per cent.
An ‘on-time’ flight is defined a departing or arriving at a UK airport either early or up to 15 minutes late. On average, monitored scheduled flights were delayed by 12 minutes, which is an increase of one minute when compared to the second quarter of 2013.
International flights
The busiest 75 scheduled international destinations had between 1,000 and 13,000 flights to and from the 10 UK airports monitored in the second quarter of 2014.
Of those, Rotterdam recorded the highest on-time performance with 88 per cent and Stavanger, Norway, had the lowest average delay of 6.9 minutes.
Flights to and from Toronto achieved the lowest on-time performance with 60 per cent and the highest average delay of 25.5 minutes.