Blog

Aug 01, 2023

UK Witnesses Year On Year Improvement In Flight Cancellations & Punctuality

A welcome change for all UK travelers. The United Kingdom's Civil Aviation

A welcome change for all UK travelers.

The United Kingdom's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regularly releases a comprehensive flight cancelation and punctuality report based on data from the country's top airports. The results for the first three months of 2023 are in and looking at the numbers, all UK travelers can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

After what seemed like nonstop disruptions a year ago through most of 2022, the UK aviation scene has come a long way and is finally on the right path. Albeit, there is still a long way to go.

Let's take a closer look at what the CAA data tells us.

The headline figure from the CAA's report is 6,400, That's how many flights were canceled between January and March earlier this year. While the number may seem like a lot, it marks a significant decrease compared to 7,300 flight cancelations in the previous three months.

From the quarterly figure of 6,400, the month of March is alone responsible for more than half the number of cancelations. A whopping 3,496 flights were canceled in March 2023, more than double the March 2022 figure of 1,398 and a significant rise from 1,750 for the same month in pre-pandemic 2019.

Delayed flight statistics also saw a welcome decline with just 28.7% of all 409,000 flights not arriving on time. The CAA said this was also an improvement from the previous three months but was still below the pre-pandemic numbers of 2019. It is worth noting that a "delayed flight" is one that operates within 15 minutes of its scheduled times.

In addition to the number of delayed flights, average delay times were also lower in the first three months of 2023 than in the last quarter of 2022.

The CAA has said Q1 2023's delays on cancelations are due to a wide range of reasons, including sporadic instances of unfavorable weather and strike action by French Air Traffic Controllers. As Simple Flying reported, British Airways was forced to make severe cancellations because of the industrial action in France.

Royal Jordanian Airlines emerged as the most punctual airline with 90% of all flights operated on time. The Middle-Eastern carrier was followed by Icelandic low-cost airline PLAY with 88% of flights on time and KLM Cityhopper with 85% of flights operated on schedule.

On the other end of the chart, Kenya Airways recorded an on-time performance of just 45% followed by Egyptair at 40%. Srilankan Airlines was the worst performing with only 39% of all its flights operated on schedule.

Get the latest aviation news straight to your inbox: Sign up for our newsletters today.

During the pandemic when the majority of passenger flights were grounded for extended periods, the air freight around the globe sector marked a sharp increase in activity. Dedicated freighter aircraft became a popular choice as opposed to the pre-pandemic trend of carrying cargo in the belly on passenger flights.

However, the CAA data signals a return to the previous trend with a sharp decline of 53% to 204,000 tonnes of cargo carried on dedicated freight flights. At the same time, cargo on passenger flights more than doubled to 330,000 tonnes.

Journalist - An engineer in the making, Devansh has always had a knack for all things aviation. As an avid observer of the Indian aviation scene, he joins the Simple Flying team with nearly two years of experience as a writer.