Flight delays hit 10-year high

Mark Benham12 April 2012

Holidaymakers flying out of London airports suffered a major rise in delays on many flights last summer, official figures revealed today.

Delays increased to a 10-year high of 18 minutes on average on scheduled flights through Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City.

Package holidaymakers on London charter flights experienced average delays of 37 minutes from July to September - far higher than the scheduled flights but an improvement on the 42-minute delays of summer 2000.

People heading for Mediterranean hotspots suffered the longest delays in overcrowded airports. The worst destinations were the Spanish island of Ibiza and Faro in Portugal, with both recording average delays of more than 52 minutes for flights to or from all UK airports.

Palma in Majorca, with 48 minutes, and the Spanish airports of Malaga and Mahon in Menorca, with 43 minutes and 37 minutes, also had long charter flight delays when taken over all UK airports, latest Civil Aviation Authority figures show.

Industry experts say poor back-up operations by charter carriers leave passengers stranded far too often. The airlines run to tight budgets and do not have the spare planes and technical maintenance staff to overcome the problem. The improvementin charter delays, while still running way above the half-hour mark, is attributed to better back-up at charter hub airports such as Gatwick. Overall, some 44 per cent of London charter flights were late from July to September 2001, down from 50 per cent the previous year.

Most worrying was the increase in delays and late planes for the more reliable scheduled services taking a mix of business and holiday traffic. For London airports the number of scheduled flights more than 15 minutes late rose from 31 per cent in summer 2000 to 33 per cent last summer.

The many cancellations post-11 September were not included in the latest figures.

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