Scottish air passengers faced with more delays

PASSENGERS endured increased delays at major UK airports in the spring, with the number of on-time scheduled flights at Glasgow and Edinburgh falling three per cent in a year.

Punctuality at Glasgow and Edinburgh airports fell. Picture: John Devlin

A total of 72 per cent of charter flight arrivals and departures from 10 major UK airports were on time between April and June, compared with 77 per cent in spring 2013.

Scheduled-flight punctuality in and out of the major airports also dipped, with the number of on-time flights falling from 78 per cent in spring 2013 to 75 per cent in spring 2014.

The five biggest London airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City - saw the number of on-time scheduled flights falling from 80 per cent in spring 2013 to 77 per cent in spring 2014.

The number of scheduled flights on time at the five other UK airports monitored - Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Glasgow and Newcastle - fell from 84 per cent in spring 2013 to 81 per cent in spring 2014.

Individually, all 10 airports saw punctuality deteriorations, with the biggest fall being at Luton, where the decline was eight percentage points.

An “on-time” flight is defined as 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.

Although the number of scheduled flights on time fell in spring 2014, the average delay, of 18 minutes, was unchanged from spring 2013.

Of the busiest routes, Rotterdam recorded the highest on-time performance with 88.3 per cent and Stavanger in Norway had the lowest average delay of 6.9 minutes.

Flights to and from Toronto achieved the lowest on-time performance with 59.7 per cent and also the highest average delay, of 25.5 minutes.