Aurigny Air is top in East Midlands ‘league of shame’ Airline delays at EMA are put under spotlight

AURIGNY Air has the longest delays of any major operator flying out of East Midlands Airport, a new study ha

Researchers have looked at the delays affecting hundreds of thousands of flights taking off from UK airports every year.

Those figures were then broken down by airport and operator to compile a local “league of shame”.

Aurigny had the worst record of any company to see more than 250 flights take off from East Midlands between January 2017 and March this year - the latest figures available.

Its 545 departures were delayed by an average of 16.9 minutes over that period.

More than a quarter of all Aurigny flights out of East Midlands (28 per cent) were delayed by at least 15 minutes, the analysis shows.

The company’s performance has been getting slightly worse during the last few months.

In 2017, Aurigny’s flights out of East Midlands were delayed by an average of 18.0 minutes. That dropped to 15.5 minutes in 2018, but rose again to 17.5 minutes for the first three months of this year.

BMI Regional had the second worst record for flights out of East Midlands Airport, with an average delay of 16.4 minutes over the 27-month period.

Thomas Cook Airlines had an average delay of 14.2 minutes, Flybe 11.6 minutes, and Ryanair 11.5 minutes.

Jet2.com fared best. The company’s 6,950 departures from East Midlands Airport between January 2017 and March 2019 had an average delay of just 9.1 minutes.

The analysis only includes airlines which saw at least 250 departures from East Midlands Airport in total during the period, and which operated at least one flight between January and March this year.

The average delay for all flights from all UK airports was 14.5 minutes.

It rose from 13.8 minutes for 2017, 15.9 minutes for 2018, and 11.3 minutes for the first quarter of 2019. That’s good news but could be partly explained by the fact the figures for this year don’t include the summer holiday rush, which tends to push up delays at the airport.

Stansted had the longest average delays for any airport, at 19.2 minutes. Birmingham (18.2 minutes), Luton (17.4 minutes) and Gatwick (16.7 minutes) were next.

Belfast City Airport had the best record, with average delays of just 8.4 minutes. Liverpool (9.0 minutes) and Bournemouth (10.6 minutes) were next.

In general, smaller airports which cover more domestic and short-haul destinations tend to have lower average delays.

Looking at flights out of all UK airports, Vueling had the worst record of any airline with more than 5,000 total departures.

The carrier had an average delay of 24.2 minutes. Thomas Cook (21.0 minutes), Norwegian Air (20.5 minutes), Wizz Air (20.5 minutes) and Air Portugal (19.9 minutes) were next.

SAS (9.2 minutes), Cathay Pacific (9.3 minutes) and Delta Airlines (9.6 minutes) had the best records for all flights out of UK airports.