Revealed: Which airlines to use for better chance of arriving on time

Published on Monday 21 September 2009 22:05

PASSENGERS on Bmi's non-London flights enjoyed the fewest delays at Scotland's two busiest airports this year.

The airline trounced rivals with average hold-ups of less than five minutes at Edinburgh and Glasgow between January and June.

However, travellers with Edinburgh-based Flyglobespan suffered the worst punctuality, with average waits of 18 minutes at Edinburgh and more than 27 minutes at Glasgow.

The figures show most airlines have improved their timekeeping over the last four years, when such information was first published.

The data also comes weeks after statistics found passengers at Britain's largest airports enjoyed the most punctual flights this spring for 14 years. This has been linked with flights being cut because of the recession.

Bmi Regional, which flies to Leeds-Bradford, Manchester and three European destinations, triumphed in the latest punctuality ratings, with nearly 94 per cent of flights at Edinburgh operating within 15 minutes – the industry yardstick. It was almost 93 per cent punctual at Glasgow. Bmi's Heathrow flights also performed well against those of its competitors, with delays to its Heathrow services at Edinburgh averaging less than eight and a half minutes against more than nine for British Airways.

The gap was narrower at Glasgow, where Bmi delays averaged just over eight minutes – half a minute less than those of BA.

KLM has cut hold-ups by seven to eight minutes while BA has nearly halved its delays at the airports. EasyJet has knocked four minutes off at Edinburgh but is largely unchanged at Glasgow.

Other airlines expanding their operations at the airports have not fared so well, with Jet2.com's average delays at Edinburgh increasing by six minutes to more than 15.

Flyglobespan has cut average delays since 2005 by one minute to 18 minutes at Edinburgh, but its hold-ups at Glasgow have nearly doubled from almost 14 minutes to 27 minutes.

Laurie Price, director of aviation strategy at Mott MacDonald,

said: "Having larger fleets of the same aircraft type helps with operational flexibility, scheduling, substitution and crewing.

"Official data shows Bmi Regional has two different types of aircraft. By comparison, it shows Flyglobespan has a fleet of 15 aircraft with six different types of aircraft, with only limited opportunity for substitution due to significantly different roles and capacity."

A spokesman for Flyglobespan said the figures "reflected the routes and complexities of the programmes the various airlines fly."

He said: "Flyglobespan's services from Glasgow and Edinburgh feature the airports' most comprehensive foreign travel service. A wide-ranging foreign schedule is liable to incur the type of delays that seldom affect domestic routes."

The figures were compiled by the website www.flightontime.info using statistics from the Civil Aviation Authority.

EDINBURGH

Rank Airline Avg. Delay (mins)

1 bmi regional 4.63

2 KLM 5.27

3 Germanwings 7.40

4 City Jet 8.08

5 bmi baby 8.19

6 bmi British Midland 8.45

7 Lufthansa 8.63

8 Loganair 8.73

9 Delta Airlines 8.94

10 British Airways 9.21

11 Flybe 9.35

12 Aer Arann 9.39

13 easyJet 10.55

14 Ryanair 10.93

15 BA CityFlyer 12.05

16 Aer Lingus 12.33

17 Norwegian Air Shuttle 13.78

18 Continental Airlines 14.56

19 Jet2 15.65

20 flyglobespan 18.27

GLASGOW

Rank Airline Avg. Delay (mins)

1 bmi regional 4.99

2 KLM 5.49

3 easyJet 8.06

4 bmi British Midland 8.12

5 BA CityFlyer 8.29

6 British Airways 8.64

7 Loganair 8.73

8 Flybe 10.04

9 bmi baby 10.34

10 Aer Lingus 13.43

11 Continental Airlines 14.91

12 Air Southwest 15.41

13 Emirates 21.01

14 Thomas Cook Airlines 21.88

15 flyglobespan 27.61

Punctuality statistics for scheduled airlines in terms of

total flights during the period (Jan-Jun 2009)