Airline punctuality at UK airports achieved the best performance in the first quarter of this year since records began in 1992.
A total of 84% of scheduled flights landing ‘on-time’ in the January to March period – a six percentage point improvement on the same period in 2013.
The average delay was nine minutes, a reduction of four minutes year on year.
The overall on-time performance for charter flights was 76% – an increase of seven percentage points, with the average delay falling by five minutes.
All 10 airports monitored by the Civil Aviation Authority saw punctuality improvements.
Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City saw an overall increase of eight percentage points of on-time flights as a proportion of total scheduled flights, rising from 76% to 84%.
Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Glasgow and Newcastle airports saw an overall increase of six percentage points, from 81% to 87% of flights being on time.
Flights to and from Dubai suffered the worst on-time performance at 63.4% and Delhi had the highest average delay of 28.3 minutes
Rotterdam flights recorded the highest on-time performance at 91.7% and Hannover had the lowest average delay of 5.1 minutes.
An ‘on-time’ flight is defined as landing/arriving at its destination either early or up to 15 minutes late.
A total of 304,000 scheduled and 10,000 charter flights at the ten airports were monitored for punctuality by the CAA. This represented a 2.3% increase in scheduled flights and a 10.5% fall in charters.
The busiest 75 scheduled international destinations had between 900 and 13,000 flights to and from the 10 UK airports monitored in the first quarter of 2014.