United Kingdom
United States
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Scheduled airlines becoming less punctual
Latest figures from the CAA shows that scheduled airlines are becoming less punctual while charter airlines are improving their punctuality.
But, despite the shift, scheduled flights are still more punctual than charter flights.
In April to June 2006, the punctuality of scheduled airlines at the 10 UK airports monitored fell from 75% to 72% compared to the same period in 2005.
Birmingham and Edinburgh were the only airports where on-time performace increased, by three percentage points and one percentage point respectively
The worse performing airports were Luton and Stansted, where punctualilty fell by 13 percentage points and 11 percentage points respectively.
Meanwhile, the punctuality of charter flights improved from 68% to 69%.
Punctuality increased at Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham but fell at all the other monitored airports.
The report classes on-time performance as any flight which arrives early or up to 15 minutes late.
The worse delays recorded were to Nice, New York (JFK), Athens, New York (Newark) and Mumbai, which had on-time performances of less than 60%.
Along with Toronto, Los Angeles and Warsaw, these destinations had the highest average delays of 20 minutes or more out of the 75 destinations most frequently served from the UK.
Tenerife had both the highest on-time performance and the lowest average delay amongst the charter destinations – 74 % and 19 minutes respectively.
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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