The best (and worst) international airports and airlines
If you are busy finalising your holiday plans, it's essential to consider potential delays, cancellations, and other possible snags.
We're reaching that time of year when everyone is travelling everywhere.
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Families are coming together for the festive season, students are going home, and others just want to escape the SA December heat.
Airports can be chaotic and cause some anxiety for travellers.
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When you travel, you want everything to go as smoothly as possible, and you can only do so much planning, but certain obstacles might jump up unexpectedly.
Whether you're preparing for a fun family vacation or want to streamline your business travel, this list provides important information.
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Then you can rest easy knowing you have at least done everything you could from your side.
The Telegraph used data supplied by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to share which airports, airlines and routes had the best and worst records for cancellations and delays in 2024.
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Some extra information to consider: in aviation, an aircraft that takes off or lands within 15 minutes is considered "on time" and airlines and airports also have to deal with unforeseeable circumstances.
Delays
Best Airports- Most punctual airport is Belfast City (Northern Ireland): average delay of just 11m 8s.
- Liverpool (England)
- East Midlands (England)
- Aberdeen (Scotland)
- Belfast International (Northern Ireland)
- Glasgow (Scotland)
- The poorest performer in terms of punctuality was Gatwick Airport (England): due to high volume of departures to Europe, frequently affected by air traffic control strikes and weather-related delays across Europe and in the south of England.
- Birmingham, Southend (England)
- Stansted (England)
- Manchester (England)
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Best Airlines- Major airlines with an average delay of 15 minutes or less: United Airlines, Finnair, Air France, Loganair and Delta.
- Best major airlines operating from the UK: British Airways (an average delay of 16m 57s) and Virgin Atlantic (16m 58s).
- Air India had an abysmal record for delays: Across 2,422 departures, the average delay per flight was 47 minutes.
- Qantas (39 minutes)
- Egypt Air (38 minutes)
- Corendon (36 minutes)
- Airlines operating the most flights from the UK: Wizz (24m 35s average delay) and TUI (23m 26s) were the worst.
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Best Routes
- Departure with the lowest average delay was Belfast International to Salzburg: just 20 seconds after the scheduled departure.
- Liverpool to Fuerteventura (Ryanair) delayed average of less than one minute.
- Manchester to Salzburg (Ryanair) delayed average of less than one minute.
- Newcastle to Keflavik (Jet2) delayed average of less than one minute.
- Major routes with an average of more than one flight per day: Liverpool to Belfast City with easyJet (4m 28s), Aberdeen to Stavanger with Wideroe (4m 47s) and Heathrow to Beijing with Air China (5m 14s).
- Manchester to Dubrovnik with TUI: average delay of 91 minutes.
- Gatwick to Bangalore with Air India: average delay of 83m.
- Heathrow to Perth with Qantas: average delay of 74m.
- Routes with the most regular flights: Heathrow to Mumbai with Air India performed particularly poorly, with an average delay of around 1 hour across 663 flights.
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Cancellations
Best Airports
- Almost guaranteed to avoid a cancelled flight departing from Bournemouth: was one flight off having a clean slate in 2024 (the only cancelled service was an easyJet flight to Geneva).
- East Midlands (0.33 per cent of flights cancelled).
- Belfast International (0.42 per cent).
- Liverpool (0.48 per cent).
- Luton (0.49 per cent) and Stansted (0.62 per cent) were the best-performing London airports.
Worst Airports
- Aberdeen Airport (Scotland): 573 of 12,589 departures (4.55%) cancelled last year, the worst record of any UK airport. Possibly due to the weather conditions and serving smaller Scottish island airports.
- Exeter (3.76%).
- Teesside (3.74%).
- Isle of Man (3.72%).
- London City was the worst of the London airports for cancellations (3.04%).
- Heathrow (1.63%)
- Gatwick (1.4%).
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Best Airlines
- Major airlines with regular flights departing from the UK: Jet2 had the lowest cancellation rate of all, 33 flight cancellations across 54,074 departures from the UK (0.06%).
- Ryanair has an impressive record of one cancellation for every 607 flights (0.16%).
- Others that performed well: Aegean, Qatar, Egypt Air, Etihad and Air Malta.
Worst Airlines
- British Airways had one cancellation for every 44 flights (2.27%).
- Virgin had one cancellation for every 63 flights (1.59%).
- EasyJet had one cancellation for every 110 flights (0.9%).
- Wizz had one cancellation for every 133 flights (0.75%).
- Eastern Airways.
- Aurigny.
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Best Routes
A significant number of routes had no cancellations whatsoever in 2024. Routes with the highest density of flights and zero cancellations:
- Ryanair’s Stansted to Barcelona service (1,347 flights)
- Stansted to Bucharest (1,151 flights)
- Luton to Dublin route (1,108)
Worst Routes
- Routes with more than 100 scheduled departures per year:
- Gatwick to Beijing with Air China was the worst performer, with 62 of the 139 flights cancelled (44%).
- Southampton to Paris with Eastern Airways: 34 of 136 flights cancelled (25%).
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Image: AFP