It is the stuff of holiday nightmares. You arrive at the airport, crane your neck to check the departures board and see that dreaded word in red letters: cancelled.
This may well be a familiar scenario, if you have recently flown out of the UK. Over the past month the UK has faced significant flight disruption, with thousands of cancellations and lengthy delays ruining holiday plans for British families. Down, largely, to staff shortages following the pandemic.
But it turns out there are patterns to flight cancellations. Know them, and you will be able to game the system to reduce your chances of disappointment.
We have crunched flight data between May 7 and June 6 this year, supplied by FlightRadar24 and OAG. There were 2,136 UK departures and arrivals cancelled in the time frame (that is, flights cancelled with one week’s notice or less), and while some airports and airlines struggled, others have remained almost entirely unscathed. There are also observable patterns on the times of the day and the day of the week when cancellations are most likely to occur.
The best (and worst) airlines
The worst major airline for flight cancellations from the UK in the past month was KLM. The Dutch airline had 87 departures cancelled from the UK: one in 20 flights. A spokesperson for KLM put the disruption down to ongoing problems at Schiphol, plus “high absenteeism due to illness”. Flybe was second worst, with 26 cancelled departures (one in 25) followed by easyJet with 636 cancellations (one in 26).
By far the best-performing major airline was Ryanair, with only three cancelled departures from the UK (one in 4,366). Jet2.com has also sidestepped the chaos, with only five cancellations (one in 1,037).
What the data also shows us is that the flight chaos is not exclusively a problem among British-based airlines. Lufthansa (Germany), SAS (Scandinavian), Wizz (Hungary) and United (USA) are among the airlines with more cancellations from UK airports than British Airways, Virgin and Jet2.com.
The best (and worst) airports
Of the top 20 major airports in the country, London City Airport has had 75 flights cancelled, or one in 30 scheduled departures. Gatwick was the second-worst, with 340 cancellations (the highest quantity) meaning one in 33 flights were cancelled. Heathrow, by comparison, only saw 173 flight cancellations, or one in 101. Manchester Airport, which has hit headlines for its staffing problems, performed better than Luton but worse than Edinburgh.
On the other end of the scale, London Stansted is by far your best bet: just 10 flight cancellations in the analysed period, one in 720. Birmingham, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool Airports also saw relatively few cancellations over the past month.
The best time to fly
If you want to get really scientific with your flight bookings, you can also sidestep flight chaos by considering the time of your flight. When it comes to cancellations, the worst time to fly is the evening (between 6pm and 9pm) and the best time to fly is late morning (between 10am and 1pm).
To take hour slots, there were 138 cancelled flights between 6pm and 6.59pm, amounting to 3 per cent of all flights in that hour. Conversely, there were only 28 flights cancelled between 11am and 11.59am, or 0.75 per cent of flights scheduled in that hour. This means that picking a more precarious hour for cancellations could quadruple your chances of disappointment.
John Grant, chief analyst at flight database company OAG, explains: “The level of cancellations is always likely to be higher later in the day as resources get stretched.
“Simply put, airlines run out of resources such as crew hours or face the risk of aircraft arriving back late and hitting some curfews at some of the more constrained airports, not just in the UK but in Europe as well.”
The best day to fly
When it comes to picking your day for travel, the data shows us that your best bet is to fly later in the week (from Wednesday to Saturday) rather than between Sunday and Tuesday. There were 256 UK departure cancellations on Sundays, amounting to 2 per cent of all flights scheduled on that day. The best day for cancellations was Saturday, when only 157 flights were cancelled, or 1.3 per cent of all scheduled flights. This means that booking on a Sunday rather than a Saturday increases your chances of a cancellation by 50 per cent.
Explaining the trend, aviation expert John Strickland said: “Saturday is a day where out of the absolute peak season (July to August) there can be more spare capacity available, especially for short haul airlines focused on week day business flights.
“Conversely Sunday is one the busiest days of the week for flights: end of long weekends, longer holidays and getting in position for the working week.”
The least-affected destinations
In terms of destinations, a third of all last-minute cancellations were on domestic routes. The worst destinations for the quantity of cancellations were the Netherlands (144) followed by Spain (110), Germany (96), France (71) and Italy (70). To minimise your chances of disappointment, consider Croatia (two cancellations), Malta (two), Iceland (two) or Austria, which had just one.
So when should you fly?
With all this in mind, we can start making more educated decisions when it comes to booking our flights. If your priority is to avoid cancellation at all costs, then always try to pick a late-morning rather than an evening flight, fly in the second half of the week and never on Sundays, aim for Stansted over Gatwick if there’s an option between the two, pick Ryanair over easyJet if you’re going low-cost, and shoot for Croatia or Malta over Italy or Spain.
Following this advice won’t make you immune to holiday disappointment, of course. After the last month we know airport disruptions can come in all shapes and sizes, and are ongoing – just this week easyJet cancelled 64 flights affecting more than 10,000 passengers. But following the above steps will give you as good a chance as any of avoiding the nightmare of cancellation. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.