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Flight punctuality improves at UK airports
Airlines flying to and from UK airports managed to improve their punctuality in the last quarter despite a growth in the number of flights.
According to figures for April to June, released today by the Civil Aviation Authority, significant improvement was seen on scheduled flights at Gatwick, Stansted and Luton and on charter flights at Gatwick and Manchester compared to last year’s second quarter.
Across the 10 airports monitored, 82% of scheduled flights were classified as being ‘on-time’, four percentage points higher than the 78% recorded in the second quarter of 2010.
The average delay fell by three minutes to 11 minutes.
This was despite an increase of 10% in scheduled flights to 348,000.
The proportion of on-time charter flights increased by eight percentage points to 74%.
The average delay across all charter flights monitored in the second quarter of 2011 was 20 minutes, an improvement on 28 minutes recorded in the second quarter of 2010.
This was despite the number of charter flights rising 1% to 24,000, mainly due to the recovery from the effect of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption in April 2010.
CAA group director for regulatory policy Iain Osborne said: “The growth we’re now seeing in flight numbers is a welcome trend, as it means more people getting to where they want to go.
“The last 18 months have seen unprecedented disruption and we are pleased to see the sector recovering from this. It is also pleasing that growth has not been at the expense of punctuality, and we hope to see collaborative work by the industry continue to reduce delays.”
On-time performance is defined as the proportion of flights arriving or departing early or up to 15 minutes late.
by Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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