UK Charter Airlines Summer 2003 Punctuality Released

[Localiser Green]

Thomas Cook has been named as the most punctual UK Charter Airline over the Summer 2003 season, based on punctuality data published by the CAA over the 1st April to 31st October 2003 period. It was the closest battle of recent times for UK charter airlines, with only 2 minutes average delay separating the top four carriers.

Runners up were:

2nd Excel Airways
3rd Air 2000
4th Britannia Airways

With the poorer carriers:

5th Monarch Airlines
6th Astraeus
7th MyTravel Airways
8th Flyjet

An overview and more detailed statistics are available at www.flightontime.info

Key points for all eight UK charter carriers are as follows:

Thomas Cook Airlines

• Leading UK charter airline for average delay and on-time performance at 12 minutes and 84% respectively.
• Average delay at Glasgow down more than 4 minutes in Summer 2003 compared with Summer 2002

Excel Airways

• Leading UK charter airline for % of flights suffering delays of 3 hours or greater at 0.82%, less than half the 2002 proportion
• Average flight delayed 3 minutes less in Summer 2003 compared with Summer 2002
• Most punctual UK charter carrier at London Gatwick in Summer 2003

Air 2000

• Leading UK charter airline for proportion of flights delayed over an hour, down from 1 in 15 (2002) to less than 1 in 20 (2003)
• Average flight delayed over 4 minutes less in Summer 2003 compared with Summer 2002
• On-time performance up 8% in 2003 to 80%
• On-time performance at Manchester up 12% to 83% in 2003
• Most punctual UK charter carrier at Manchester in Summer 2003

Britannia Airways

• Average flight delayed nearly 9 minutes less in Summer 2003 compared with Summer 2002
• On-time performance up 9% in 2003 to 83%, second best carrier in this category
• Proportion of flights delayed over an hour down from 1 in 11 (2002) to 1 in 20 (2003)
• On-time performance at Manchester up 11% to 79% in 2003
• Most punctual UK charter carrier at both London Luton and London Stansted in Summer 2003

Monarch Airlines

• On-time performance up more than 2% in 2003 to 73%.
• Average flight delay at Birmingham down 9 minutes in 2003

Astraeus

• Average flight delay down over 8 minutes in Summer 2003 compared with Summer 2002
• On-time performance up nearly 15% in 2003 to 64%
• Proportion of flights delayed over an hour has halved from 1 in 5 (2002) to 1 in 10 (2003)
• Significant punctuality improvement at London Gatwick with average delay 10 minutes less than in 2002

MyTravel Airways

• Average flight delayed by 30 minutes in Summer 2003, 4 minutes longer compared with Summer 2002
• Proportion of flights suffering delays of 3 hours or more up 33% compared with Summer 2002
• Proportion of flights delayed 3 hours or more at Manchester has doubled from 1 in 40 flights (2002) to 1 in 20 flights (2003)
• Overall on-time performance between 2002 and 2003 has held fairly constant
• Lengthy delays of more than 1 hour and more than 3 hours have increased.
• On-time performance at Newcastle has improved by 6% in Summer 2003 compared with Summer 2002.

Flyjet

• New entrant into the UK charter market in 2003 therefore there were far fewer analysed flights compared with the above carriers
• Overall 44% on-time performance, average flight delayed 40 minutes
• Better performance at Manchester compared with London Gatwick

[MANTHRUST]

Well it's nearly my bed time think I'll read this thread one more time just to get the ol' eye lids a droppin..........zzzzzzzzzz!

[Mad-Air]

Punctuality.....

Well it's only because Thomas cook have been playing catch up for the last 2 seasons!!

Excel lead the way (for the last two seasons) because they threw the gauntlet down when the carrier changed management, outlook, philosophy and the whole company ethos. When you look at how the other carriers have been trying to follow suit its taken them that long to catch-up.

Localiser: You don't happen to work for Thomas Cook do you?!

[brabazon]

OK, given that Today on Radio 4 had an article on train punctuality and that the train operators have "allegedly" been asked to increase their published times in order to "improve" their punctuality http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3401839.stm - how about a debate on how much airlines "pad" their schedules to improve their punctuality. How many times have you left late on a flight and for the captain to apologise but say that with a good routing and a following wind we may "make up the time" and miraculously you arrive almost "on time"? If you compared the aircraft performance block time with the scheduled times I would have thought that there's a good margin in there to account for possible ATC, weather or passenger related delays.

[jmccrew]

Mad Air ... "Playing catch up " think you will find tcx were number 1 in 2002 and jmc number 1 2001

you work for excel by any chance

[jmc-man]

Yes, it;s nice to sit at No.1 for the third year in a row. However, all is not what it seems.

One of the techniques we use ( as does Excel) is to give the passengers a different scheduled departure time than the one generated by our airport slot by up to 10 minutes. This means that we can leave 10 to 15 minutes late, and still show on the airport stats as being on time.

However, as we improve punctuality, we tend to leave closer to the published departure time, putting us early on our airport slot, which has pissed off the airport authorities.

I hear investigations are under way with both airlines and the airports, particularly following complaints from other carriers about a "level playing field".

[This Charming Man]

Don't get too giddy Mad-Air. It is understood that a certain European agency is sniffing !

[stanley37uk]

Does anyone know why MYT and old AIH are so consistenely worse than other carriers ?? Even during the winter , at GLA , with no knock-on effects of overnight flights , they are nearly always worse than BY , TCX , etc ...........