Revealed: The airports where you're most likely to be delayed this summer

One in five of all summer flights out of UK airports last year were delayed, with Gatwick the worst offender, according to new analysis.

Nearly a third (30 per cent) of services leaving the Surrey airport between June and September 2016 were more than 30 minutes behind schedule, a statistic much worse than those of the joint second tardiest, Belfast International and Luton, where 23 per cent of flights left more than half-an-hour late.

In all, 38,000 of 199,000 international flights from UK airports over the peak holiday period were late, according to BBC analysis of figures from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA).

Though the majority of behind schedule services were from London airports - Luton, Stansted, Gatwick and Heathrow - the latter did not make the top 10 with the highest proportion of delays. The data did not cover cancelled flights.

The CAA’s figures also revealed that the route to suffer the most delays was from London Heathrow to Accra, the Ghanaian capital, with 70 per cent of flights (85 out of 122) late by more than 30 minutes.

The longest single delay was for a chartered flight from Manchester to Dusseldorf last September, which took off 779 minutes - or 13 hours - later than planned.

The data showed that the average delay at the 25 major UK airports surveyed was 21 minutes, and that most delays took place in June.

Three quarters of the 40 most delay-prone routes out of the UK were to European countries, the BBC found, while the non-European countries with the highest number of late flights were Ghana, Canada, US, Israel, Ukraine and Pakistan.

Most delayed routes last summer

1. Manchester to Dusseldorf

2. Gatwick to Cunagua Cayo Coco

3. Edinburgh to Oslo Gardermoen

4. Jersey to Dusseldorf

5. Birmingham to Malta

6. Belfast International to Burgas

7. Bristol to Thira Santorini

8. Gatwick to New York JFK

9. Gatwick to Warsaw Chopin

10. Heathrow to Split

In terms of the average longest delay, the mammoth wait on the flight to Dusseldorf, above, pushed that route to the top of the table, with Gatwick to Cunagua Cayo Coco in Cuba second and Edinburgh to Oslo third. Jersey to Dusseldorf and Birmingham to Malta completed the top five.

A spokesperson for Gatwick said “repeated strike action on the continent” and heavily congested airspace over London and parts of Europe led to an increase in the number of delays, adding “Gatwick has more flights to Europe than any UK airport and is impacted disproportionately by events on the continent”.

A spokesperson for Belfast International told the BBC that it does all it can to minimise delays.

“Our on-time performance is generally very good but sometimes we, too, fall victims to things that are outside our control.”

In January this year aviation insights company FlightStats published data on the worst airlines for delays, using data from 2016.

The most punctual international airlines of 2016

1. KLM (88.53 per cent of arrivals on time)

2. Iberia (88.18 per cent)

3. JAL (87.8 per cent)

4. Qatar Airways (86.34 per cent)

5. Austrian (85.74 per cent)

6. ANA (85.54 per cent)
   

7. Singapore Airlines (85.45 per cent)
   

8. Delta Air Lines (85.17 per cent)
   

9. TAM Linhas Aéreas (85.07 per cent)
   

10. Qantas (84.3 per cent)
    

Dutch airline KLM scooped the top spot, with 88.53 per cent of its flights arriving on schedule. Spanish carrier Iberia came a close second, while Japan’s JAL and ANA placed third and sixth, respectively.

According to the report, a measly 75.17 per cent of British Airways flights arrived on time last year, while 75.12 per cent of easyJet’s arrivals ran to schedule. The ranking of the pair among all international airlines was not revealed.

The least punctual international airlines of 2016

1. Hainan Airlines (30.3 percent of arrivals on time)

2. Korean Air (31.74 per cent)

3. Air China (32.73 per cent)

4. Hong Kong Airlines (33.42 per cent)

5. China Eastern Airlines (35.8 per cent)

6. Asiana Airlines (37.46 per cent)

7. Philippine Airlines (38.33 per cent)

8. Air India (38.71 per cent)

9. Icelandair (41.05 per cent)

10. El Al (56 per cent)