According to the analysis, Manchester Airport is experiencing the worst delays, averaging 19-and-a-half minutes – longer than all other UK airports despite representing a 30-second improvement from the previous year.
The analysis took into account scheduled and chartered departures from the 23 commercial UK airports with at least 1,000 outbound flights last year, not including cancellations.
A spokesman for Bournemouth Airport said the reason for delays were outside its control “in the majority of cases”, and that it was “one of the UK’s top-ranked regional airports for passenger satisfaction”.
The airport recently reported its “best ever year,”, external with a 26% rise in passengers to 1,395,783 as of the end of March.
Bell said the statistics used for the rankings were “pretty high level and generally don’t take into account most of the things that are outside of an airport’s control”.
Flight delays are often caused by issues such as bad weather and air traffic control (ATC) disruption, which Bell described as the driver of the majority of delays.
“I would suggest that if you’re taking a flight that’s two, three-plus hours and potentially much longer, a 15-minute delay probably isn’t going to disrupt your journey plans that significantly,” he said.