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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Travel
Milo Boyd

UK's worst airports for chance of flight delays including Manchester and Heathrow

Manchester Airport has been judged to be the UK's worst airport in terms of flight delays.

A new data study from The Bucket List Company looked into the most and least reliable airports in the country, judging them according to the percentage of flights delayed, average length of delays and number of flights cancelled.

Average review ratings were also taken into account.

Manchester came out as being the most unreliable airport within the UK, with a huge 51% of flights delayed, according to UK Civil Aviation Authority Data.

While some flying out of the airport have found themselves stuck on the tarmac or in the terminal for hours, the average flight was held back by just 11 minutes.

Long queues have been a feature of Manchester Airport (Ioannis Alexopoulos/LNP)

To top it off Manchester has also faced 1,347 cancellations in the last year, contributing to an overall review score of two.

The airport's ranking will not surprise too many people who've travelled through it this year.

The North West travel hub has been hit with serious staffing issues, causing lengthy queues for security and issues with baggage reclaim.

London Heathrow isn't far behind Manchester as being one of the least reliable airports.

The London travel hub has seen 48% of its flights delayed, an average delay time of 12 minutes and 4,774 cancelled flights in the past year.

Staffing issues have caused chaos at UK airports this spring and summer (Ioannis Alexopoulos/LNP)

Coming out as the most reliable airport in the UK is Belfast International. In the past year the airport has only seen 33% of flights be delayed, with an average delay time of 6 minutes.

The airport has only had 37 cancelled flights over the past 12 months, yet despite this they score an average review rating of 2 based on Skytrax reviews.

It should be noted that the ratings average out scores from all the study's criteria, meaning airports such as Heathrow came close to the bottom of the list, but is well liked by customers.

Airport Percentage of flights delayed Average Length of Delays (Minutes) Number of Cancelled Flights Average Review
Belfast International 33 6 37 2
London Gatwick 40 7 509 4
Bristol 42 9 210 3
Glasgow 38 9 986 4
London Stansted 44 7 396 2
Edinburgh 40 8 649 3
London Luton 49 11 464 2
Birmingham 50 11 386 3
London Heathrow 48 12 4774 4
Manchester 51 11 1347 2

A Manchester Airport spokesperson suggested the survey was based on "unsubstantiated metrics" and questioned why Heathrow was not ranked lower, claiming that the latter had three times the number of cancellations.

They also noted that the period looked at cover a time when travel restrictions were in place, meaning the number of cancelled flights was likely to be higher than a typical year.

They said: "We are firmly focused on our recovery and have seen a marked increase in our performance since restrictions were lifted just a few months ago in March.

"Our recruitment drive goes from strength to strength and we’ve not had to make any airport enforced cancellations unlike Heathrow and Gatwick."

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