AirHelp report: Nearly one in three flights disrupted last year

AirHelp, which supports passengers with flight disruption compensation, says nearly one in three British travelers suffered disruption in 2024.

AirHelp has unveiled the major disruption events in a report that impacted travel in the UK and Europe last year.

AirHelp found over 145 million UK passengers travelled on a plane last year, with 960,000 flights departing.

Of these passengers, 32% were disrupted (47 million) and 3.4 million people were entitled to £520 compensation under the UK 261 regulation.

Although still high, it shows that that disruption rates are slowly decreasing year on year.

The disruption rate improved slightly from 36% in 2022 and 34% in 2023.

The number of people eligible for compensation has also declined from 3.6 million in 2023.

Unsurprisingly, July saw the highest number of flight disruptions, with over 44% of passengers facing delays or cancellations.

The 19 July in particular, was the most disrupted day in the UK, with 332,000 people (67%) experiencing disruptions.

This was due to the Crowdstrike outage wreaking havoc for travellers around the world.

Dates in September follow closely behind with 61% of passengers facing disruptions on 6 September and 59% on 26 September.

Those travelling at the beginning of 2024 were the most fortunate, with only 22% of passengers experiencing disruptions when departing from a UK airport in January and February.

Looking specifically at the UK’s airports reveals London Heathrow was ranked the busiest airport with over 42.7 million people last year.

London Gatwick follows with 21.1 million passengers. This airport also had one of the highest numbers of disrupted passengers, at a staggering rate of 38%.

Cardiff Airport tops the list with 45% of passengers disrupted in 2024.

AirHelp’s data also uncovered the airports with the best on-time performance.

Liverpool John Lennon Airport fared the best with only 20% of its passengers facing delays or cancellations.

Belfast City Airport and Prestwick Airport were next with disruption rates of 22%.

AirHelp’s data reveals that the 10 busiest routes all departed from London Heathrow.

The airport’s routes to New York JFK (1.6 million passengers) and Dubai (1.2 million passengers) take the top spots, closely followed by its routes to Hamad International Airport (966,000 passengers) and Los Angeles (924,000 passengers).

When looking at the most disrupted routes from UK airports, London Gatwick to Bengaluru International Airport ranked the highest with over 94% of flights disrupted, impacting over 15,000 passengers last year.

Nearly one billion people travelled in Europe (including the UK) in 2024 and 30% of these passengers were disrupted (287 million people).

The highest disruption rates were found in Greece (37%), Portugal (34%) and Germany (34%), in comparison to only 19% of passengers facing delays or cancellations when travelling from Norway last year.

Additionally, over 19.5 million European passengers were eligible to claim compensation.

“Our 2024 Disruptions Report aims to put a spotlight on the ongoing challenge of flight disruptions and help passengers understand the resources that are available to them when they face flight cancellations or delays in the future,” said Tomasz Pawliszyn, CEO of AirHelp.

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