Third of flights delayed in 2022

More than a third of UK flights were delayed last year, according to the aviation regulator.

The Civil Aviation Authority said travel operators' performance had been affected by the challenges they faced in the first half of 2022.

Only 63% of flights departed or arrived in the UK within 15 minutes of their scheduled time.

This was down from 75% in 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

Having shed thousands of jobs during the worst of the pandemic, many aviation businesses including airports couldn't get new staff in place quickly enough.

Many passengers experienced queues, delays, or cancellations. Heathrow and Gatwick airports then introduced limits on numbers over the summer peak, and a number of airlines scaled back their schedules.

A spokesperson for Airlines UK, the trade body for UK-registered carriers said "the whole industry knows how important punctuality is for customers. Last year was not representative due to the late unwinding of Covid restrictions which required a very steep ramp up."

They added "since then, the whole industry has invested huge resources into increased resilience for this summer".

For 2022 as a whole, UK air travel recovered to 75% of 2019 levels. 224 million passengers travelled to and from UK airports last year, three times as many as the previous year.

The CAA's Head of Consumers, Anna Bowles, said the "bounce-back in passenger numbers was at times overshadowed by the challenges that the aviation sector faced in the early summer of 2022, which saw an unacceptable level of flight cancellations and delays."

This year, she said the regulator expected "increased resilience and continued improved performance by airlines"

Around 2% of all flights were cancelled, with May and June most heavily affected.

The average delay across departures and arrivals was 22 minutes, up 60% on 2019.

Rocio Concha from the consumer group Which? described the figures as "dreadful" but "unsurprising to anyone who endured the widespread chaos at UK airports last year", adding that the way airlines had treated many passengers was "unacceptable".

The bosses of both Gatwick and Heathrow airports have expressed confidence their operations will run smoothly this year.