UK-Dubai flights most likely to be delayed

UK air passengers flying to Dubai were most likely to suffer delays during the first quarter of 2012, according to new data released by the Civil Aviation Authority.

It said that out of 75 scheduled international destinations, flights to and from Dubai recorded the worst on-time performance of 66 percent compared to Rotterdam which achieved the best performance of 93 percent.

The statistics also showed that flights to and from Toronto had the highest average delay of 20 minutes.

Overall, the on-time performance of scheduled flights across the UK's 10 major airports was 82 percent, the same as last year, the aviation authority added.

From January to March 2012, there was a two percent drop in scheduled flights to 307,000 and a 6.4 percent drop in 11,000 charter passenger flights compared with the same period of 2011.

Iain Osborne, CAA group director for regulatory policy, said: "It is excellent to see that airlines have managed to maintain their record performance this year, but given the decline in flight numbers, we might have hoped to see punctuality improving even further."