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Heathrow suffers from the highest percentage of delayed and cancelled flights over its main rival airports in Europe, a study claims.
Flight data expert EUclaim found that Heathrow had the highest number of incidents of delays or cancellations over 30 minutes between 2012 and 2014.
Amsterdam Schiphol and Frankfurt airports, both of which deal with a similar number of flights to Heathrow every year but use more runways, had a much better record of delays averaging between 6.5% and 7% of incidents.
Gatwick, which handles the least amount of flights out of the four, averaged a 17% to 22% of delays.
Heathrow had the highest, maintaining an average of almost a quarter of the flights delayed, according to analysis of flight delays data at the four airports over the last three years by EUclaim.
The group’s UK manager, Adeline Noorderhaven, issued the statistics as the Airports Commission recommended Heathrow be expanded with a third runway.
“Heathrow is currently running at 99% capacity,” she said.
“The reason that London Heathrow has such a high percentage of delays compared to its European counterparts is because it’s functioning on two runways while Frankfurt and Amsterdam have four and five respectively.
“The proposed third runway will make a huge difference to air passengers, lessening the chance of delay and the need to claim flight delay compensation, we believe it is a very positive step.”