The UK’s worst airlines for flight cancellations have been revealed

Delays are disruptive enough when you’re heading on holiday, but your flight being cancelled can ruin the trip entirely.

But booking with a more expensive airline doesn’t guarantee things will run as scheduled – in fact, new research suggests it’s quite the opposite.

After analysing over 1.7 million flights in and out of UK airports logged by the Civil Aviation Authority, Norton Insurance Brokers revealed Eastern Airways is worst for cancelling.

With 10.4% of its 6,166 flights in 2023 not going ahead, the carrier (which offers domestic routes between regional airports like Newquay, Wick and Southampton, as well as to Paris) was ranked least reliable.

Smaller airlines with less than 3,500 scheduled trips made up the next five spots on the list percentage-wise, while the only two major operators featured were KLM and Loganair at seventh and ninth respectively.

KLM, a Dutch firm which travels to 145 destinations worldwide, offers perks like free refreshments (even on short-haul) and is part of the SkyTeam alliance alongside other reputable airlines like Virgin Atlantic and Air France.

Last year though, it cancelled 1,414 – or 4.5% – of its 32,126 scheduled flights. Not exactly ideal.

Meanwhile, 4.5% of Loganair’s 64,760 scheduled journeys failed to depart.

But given its fleet is mainly made up of small planes and its largely domestic routes serve the country’s tiniest airports (including Barra, the only airport in the world to use a beach as a runway) it’s likely weather issues factored into at least some cancellations.

Despite sometimes catching flak, budget operators easyJet and Ryanair fared well in the study, with the former cancelling 1.6% of its flights and the latter 0.5% – both less than the national average of 1.7%.

In comparison, flag carrier British Airways came out with a cancellation rate of 3.2%, and its subsidiary BA CityFlyer scoring just below at 3%.

The best popular carrier was TUI, with cancellations affecting a mere 0.2% of its trips in 2023. Jet2 was another safe bet with 0.4% of its flights cancelled.

In a recent survey, Which? rated Jet2 top of the list for customer service, its +81 score in stark contrast to Ryanair’s +28 and British Airways’ +46.

Rocio Concha, the consumer champion’s director of policy and advocacy, said: ‘Travellers are currently facing some of the highest ever fares, but our latest survey shows the standards of customer service of some airlines to be very poor.

‘Airlines must step up their game and ensure they are properly investing in their customer services to make it easier for passengers to get in touch with someone who can help, and get timely and effective solutions when they encounter a problem.’

In the meantime, being choosy about who you book with and ensuring you’ve got travel insurance could save your long-awaited break from disaster.

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