UK flight punctuality statistics guide

Every month the CAA publishes punctuality data for airlines operating at ten major UK airports. You can use this information to check by airline how punctual flights were on your chosen route (for instance Manchester to Malaga), and compare their historic performance against one another before you book a flight (although because it is historic, it may not always be a good guide to how punctual future flights will be).

To check an airline’s historic performance, click on the month you want to check (it’s a good idea to check the same month you plan to travel in, and the latest available data to make sure you get a full picture of the performance. You can also look at yearly data, particularly for routes with a small number of flights in individual months). When the page loads, click on the PDF icon under View File and scroll down to the PDF’s Contents on page three.

In the first section, ‘Full Analysis – By Reporting Airport’ find the airport you plan to travel from, and click the Go button next to its name. You will see a list of Countries, and Airports down the left hand side of the table. This list is ordered alphabetically, so if you were looking for flights leaving Manchester for Malaga, you would click Go next to Manchester, scroll down until you find Spain on the left hand side, then scroll down to Malaga under that.

You will see a list of all the airlines that operate services between the two airports. The key sections to consider are the ‘Number of flights matched’ column, which tells you how many movements were operated, the ‘% of Early to 15 Minutes Late’ column, which tells you what percentage of all flights were operated within 15 minutes of their scheduled departure/arrival time and the ‘Percentage of Flights Late’ columns, which tell you how late delayed flights were. You can also see what the Average Delay in minutes was in the next column.

If you find it easier to see the information printed out, when you have found your chosen route, go to File, Print, and ensure that you click Current Page, otherwise you will print all 300 pages of data.

All the data presented in these documents is also available in CSV format. We publish quarterly press notices on punctuality for the ten monitored airports and the 75 most popular routes.

Notes on methodology and introductory notes can be found in pages 4 to 9 of the PDF documents.

Notes

The data which the CAA receives from UK airports to calculate its punctuality statistics relate to when aircraft reach the runway for landing or take-off. This is not the same as the time of passenger arrival or departure at the terminal as referred to in the EU's Denied Boarding Legislation. The CAA uses average taxying time to convert from runway times to terminal times, which is appropriate for its analysis of punctuality at an aggregate level, but may not be appropriate for an individual flight.

Disclaimer

The information contained in these reports has been compiled from various sources of data. CAA validates this data, however, no warranty is given as to its accuracy, integrity or reliability. CAA cannot accept liability for any financial loss caused by a person’s reliance on any of these statistics. No statistical data provided by CAA maybe sold on to a third party. CAA insists that they are referenced in any publication that makes reference to CAA Statistics.