Flight punctuality fell at all the UK’s 10 largest airports in the third quarter of this year, the second quarter where performance has dipped.
According to the latest figures from the Civil Aviation Authority, punctuality for scheduled flights fell, on average, by five percentage points to 75% across all of the monitored airports in July to September compared to the same three months in 2013.
But the drop was particularly dramatic at some airports.
The percentage of on-time flights at Luton fell 12 percentage points to 71%, Gatwick fell by 11 percentage points to 64% and Stansted fell by nine points to 74%.
The drop was not as severe at London City – four percentage points to 85% – or at Heathrow – less than one percentage point so staying the same at 76%.
On average, scheduled flights were delayed by 14 minutes, an increase of two minutes on 2013.
Meanwhile, the overall on-time performance for charter flights was 71%, a fall of eight percentage points compared with the third quarter of 2013.
The average delay was 18 minutes, which is two minutes more than in the third quarter of 2013.
An ‘on-time’ flight is defined as departing or arriving at a UK airport either early or up to 15 minutes late.
Iain Osborne, group director for regulatory policy at the CAA, said: "Passengers should be able to rely on arriving at their destination in good time, and flight punctuality has steadily improved in recent years.
"The figures for the last two quarters are disappointing and it is now for the industry to do all they can to improve punctuality performance.
"Notwithstanding this, we are aware of several mitigating factors which have recently affected flight punctuality including airline strikes in France and Germany and several periods of poor and foggy weather."
Flights to and from Pisa achieved the lowest on-time performance with 49.9%.
Flights to and from Orlando were hit by the highest average delay of 31.9 minutes.
