There is only one reason to go to an airport: to catch a flight. That’s why the last thing you want to hear when you’re already through security and already eating your overpriced toastie, is that your flight is cancelled.
As it turns out, some airports are worse than others when it comes to making sure that your journey goes ahead. Airadvisor, a consumer advice website, has been analysing the data around UK flight cancellations, and it’s discovered which airport in the UK is officially the least reliable. What’s surprising is that it’s not Heathrow or Gatwick – in fact, it’s a fairly small terminal by comparison.
For it’s study, Airadvisor looked at departure data from the 20 busiest airports across the UK since 2023, and found that the worst for cancellations is officially… Southampton! When you’re heading out from the southern hub, there’s a 3.4 percent chance that you’ll fall victim to a cancelled flight. That may not sound like a lot, but when you consider that the national average was 1.5 percent, it starts to look a little rough.
According to Airadvisor, despite Southampton only seeing 853,000 through its gates per year – very little compared to the millions landing and departing at Gatwick or Heathrow – it has been struggling for a while with ‘persistent staffing issues and a limited infrastructure, which can be exacerbated during busy travel periods’.
Just tailing Southampton was Belfast City airport, also known as George Best airport, with a cancellation rate of 3.3 percent. Airadvisor chalk this up to its regional focus, which makes it ‘more vulnerable to these kinds of disruptions, particularly when flights connect to bigger airports’.
In third was London’s first entry onto the list, with London City Airport seeing 3.1 percent of its flights cancelled over the two year period. However, this is down from 4 percent the year before, so it is getting better and more reliable with time.
Bournemouth airport had the best rates of any surveyed by Airadvisor, with only 0.08 percent of flights due to depart not making it into the skies. Bristol and East Midlands airports were also sitting comfortably at 0.39 and 0.66 percent of departures cancelled respectively.
If you’re about to book a holiday and want the best possible odds of the journey going smoothly, you can have a look at Airadvisor’s full report here.
Air travel in the UK with Time Out
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