Bristol named the UK's most punctual airport

Bristol is the most punctual airport in the UK and the only British inclusion in the world’s top 20, new figures reveal.

New rankings for 2015 placed the small West Country airport as the ninth most on-time small airport in the world, with 88.64 per cent of its flights arriving or departing within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.

Aviation analyst OAG broke down its rankings into three groups – the top 20 small, medium and large airports around the world. And Bristol was the only airport from the UK to feature in any of them.

In 2014, Bristol was the UK's ninth busiest airport. In December, the airport announced its first transatlantic routes, with WOW air flying to Toronto, Montral, Washington DC and Boston.

Most punctual small airports

Osaka, Japan, topped the small airport table, categorised as those that carry less than 10million seats per year, with 93.85 per cent.

London Heathrow, which would fall into the large airport ranking, with more than 20million seats a year, was noticeable in its absence. Tokyo’s Haneda airport topped that league, with 91.25 per cent punctuality.

Most punctual large airports

The report said: “Despite being the world’s fifth largest airport by seats in 2015, London Heathrow’s capacity issues continue to impede on-time performance, meaning it does not make it into our league.

“Neither do any of the other large UK airports. We can only hope that 2016 will bring progress on the outstanding decisions on new runways.”

The end-of-year report also ranked the world’s airlines by punctuality, with airBaltic topping the table, and the top British airline being Monarch, in at 14th, with 88.18 per cent.

The most punctual airlines

The most punctual low-cost carrier was Azul, a Brazilian airline, with British Jet2.com in fifth, and easyJet in 14th.

OAG found that budget airlines, though not matching mainline carriers for punctuality, are working hard to improve their timings. The average punctuality for low-cost carriers was 83.1 per cent, compared with 94.7 per cent for mainline.

The report said Ryanair could not be included as OAG could not acquire enough to data for it.

The most punctual budget airlines

Author of the report, John Grant, a senior analyst at the company, said overall punctuality had improved across the industry.

“Investment in new technology, improved operating procedures and most importantly, the skill and professionalism of the airline and airport operators translates into the continual improvements wer are reporting year on year,” he said.

Responding to its failure to make the league table, a Heathrow spokesperson said: “Punctuality is at the heart of what we do at Heathrow and we’re always looking for innovative ways to improve it.

“Heathrow is the only major hub airport in the world to operate at 99 per cent capacity and we operate more than twice the number of aircraft movements on just two runways than the combined average of other global hubs. While we’ve become extremely efficient at it, we will only be able to build more resilience into the system with additional runway capacity.”