Airline delays from UK airports were reduced across the peak summer period for both scheduled and charter flights, latest data shows.
Flights to and from Larnaca in Cyprus suffered the worst on-time performance of 61% and Toronto the highest average delay of 23 minutes, according to the Civil Aviation Authority.
The statistics for July to September reveal that 79% of scheduled flights were on-time, a seven percentage point improvement on summer 2010.
The proportion of on-time charter flights increased by 10 percentage points to 73%, compared with the same period of 2010.
The average delay across all scheduled flights was 12 minutes, a fall of four minutes year on year. The charter delay was 22 minutes, down from 30 minutes in summer 2010.
A “significant improvement” in reducing delays was seen on scheduled flights at Gatwick, Stansted and Luton and on charter flights at 10 UK airports surveyed.
There were 364,000 scheduled flights and 32,000 charter flights at the 10 airports, representing a 0.4% rise in scheduled services and a 4.1% drop in charters.
CAA regulatory policy group director Iain Osborne said: “After the poor performances airlines showed on punctuality during summer 2010, we welcome the evident improvements this year.
“However, there is always potential for improvement. We expect that punctuality information like this will help consumers to compare airlines and airports, and so improve performance further by harnessing market forces.”