Scheduled flights more punctual in third quarter

The Civil Aviation Authority has released the results of a recent survey of ten airports in the UK, showing that the overall punctuality of scheduled flights improved in the third quarter of 2008.

According to the statistics, 70 per cent of scheduled flights were early to 15 minutes late between July and September, which is an improvement of four per cent on the same period in 2007.

The biggest improvement was recorded at Edinburgh Airport, where punctuality improved by ten per cent to reach 77 per cent, while at Glasgow Airport on-time performance rose six per cent to 76 per cent.

At the London airports monitored, there was a five per cent increase in scheduled flight punctuality to 68 per cent, with both Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport achieving a six per cent improvement in on-time performance.

The proportion of on-time flights at both Stansted Airport and London City Airport rose by five per cent in the third quarter of the year, but at Luton Airport there was a decline of four per cent in punctuality.

There was a fall of two minutes in average delays across all of the scheduled flights monitored by the CAA to 17 minutes between July and September.

Of the scheduled and charter flights handling the most passengers from the UK, services to Rotterdam were found to have the highest on-time flight performance of 85 per cent and the lowest average delay of eight minutes.

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