BUDGET airline bmibaby has come bottom in a punctuality league table at Manchester Airport.
The no-frills carrier propped up a table of the nine-biggest scheduled airlines in detailed “on-time” winter season figures.
They were compiled by airport officials for airlines – and obtained by the M.E.N.
They reveal just 48 per cent of their arrivals landed “on time”, defined by the Civil Aviation Authority as within 15 minutes of the schedule.
The average delay was 32 minutes, although the actual average delay for passengers was 47 minutes when the grace period is added.
The airline also came bottom in the departures punctuality league, with a record of 63 per cent of flights leaving “on time” and an average delay of 23 minutes (actual, 38 minutes).
The airline, with nine destinations from its new base at Birmingham, has proved extremely poplar since it became Manchester’s first significant no-frills carrier last year – it now goes to ten destinations.
Managing director Tony Davis said: “Manchester is worst for punctuality, but we are working hard with our handling agent and the airport to ensure an improvement.”
The airline mainly uses smaller airports and he admitted the size of Manchester Airport may be a factor.
VLM Airlines, which flies shuttles to City of London Airport, and Eastern Airways, which operates services to Inverness, Stansted and Norwich, alternately share the top two spots for both departures and arrivals, with between 89 and 93 per cent of aircraft on time between November and March.
British Airways, by far the airport’s biggest airline, scores a 73 per cent record for departures and 84 per cent for arrivals.
In separate league tables for charter airlines, Thomas Cook Airlines and First Choice Airways, formerly Air 2000, perform the best of the major carriers.
Thomas Cook Airlines comes top of the arrivals league with 80 per cent on time, while First Choice Airways tops the departures league, with 88 per cent.
Britannia comes third, while MyTravel Airways comes second from bottom in both the six-strong departures and arrivals leagues.
Monarch Airlines and Excel Airways share the bottom spots, although they fly relatively fewer flights, while MyTravel Airways, which plans to axe 540 jobs, landed 59 per cent of its planes on time, with 75 per cent taking off on time.
Recent punctuality figures comparing airports rather than airlines, revealed the proportion of “on time” scheduled flights fell at Manchester, while charter punctuality improved.
Not really surprising, yet more bad press from BMi Baby.
On a separate theme, has anyone else noticed some horrific delays at MAN tonight?
MYT052 ORLANDO SANFORD 07:20 EXPECTED TOMORROW 04:00
TCX403L PALMA 15:20 EXPECTED 22:15
MYT192 PALMA 19:45 EXPECTED 23:20
EAF1353 PALMA 19:50 EXPECTED 22:50
MON5605 PALMA 20:15 EXPECTED 22:50
On The Departures the following still havent departed…
TCX473K ORLANDO SANFORD 13:10
TCX559K LAS PALMAS 16:40
WW5533 BARCELONA 18:05
Alot of angry people tonight I imagine!
By: danairboy - 15th August 2004 at 18:04
I hate BMIBaby, I was so annoyed when all the BMI East Midlands flights switched to Baby.
By: LBARULES - 15th August 2004 at 17:09
I think Shamrock was suggesting that BMIBaby reduce their no. of operating bases not routes. It’s logical that fewer bases could then possibly support more routes and hence more a/c at each base. If one a/c goes tech then a replacement a/c should be available sooner.(As opposed to waiting for one to position in from another airport). A good example being Jet2..they have 6-7 a/c based at LBA. I bet their knock-on delays are far less than BMIBaby. Anyone know by chance?
Jet2 one of the most punctual airlines around, indeed winning the award of most punctual airline into AMS.
It really annoys me when people say Jet2 are only punctual because their aircraft are always sat on the ground, out of 7 a/c, they have 5 departures early morning and 5 around dinnertime with 1 a/c still in the air from the morning, so thats 6 out 7 used, and when the CDG route starts next year that will be all aircraft used.
By: andrewm - 15th August 2004 at 12:39
Bmi are cancelling East Mids arnt they in favour of Birmingham or is that easyJet???
By: dc10fan - 15th August 2004 at 12:17
Shamrock – why would they reduce routes to help them beat delays?
This is just a phase they are going through at MAN as no doubt one of their based aircraft has a ticky engine or something like that, that keeps causing trouble and needs sorting on a regular basis therefore causing delays.
Remember for every say 4/6 routes out of one airport operatings on a 3/4 times a week service this can be run by 1 aircraft and the reason they stagger the schedule is to allow for this one aircraft to run lots of return journeys maximising its effiency as its costs to have it resting on the ground anywhere it goes.
I think Shamrock was suggesting that BMIBaby reduce their no. of operating bases not routes. It’s logical that fewer bases could then possibly support more routes and hence more a/c at each base. If one a/c goes tech then a replacement a/c should be available sooner.(As opposed to waiting for one to position in from another airport). A good example being Jet2..they have 6-7 a/c based at LBA. I bet their knock-on delays are far less than BMIBaby. Anyone know by chance?
By: LBARULES - 15th August 2004 at 11:40
FYI The Orlando delay will be due to the hurricane they are suffering at the moment
Yeah I should have known that. Looking on the arrivals board, BY,TCX,MYT and EUK flights are all delayed by about a day presumably due to a hurricane.
Some other awful delays there though, a Britannia flight from KGS due in about 12 hours late, an XLA flight from Antalya (I think?), due in about 17 hours late I think.
Also KGS flights into LGW, a MYT flight with a 15 hour delay, a BY with 7 hour delay and a Britannia flight from Sharm El Sheikh due in 24 hours late!
By: wannabe pilot - 15th August 2004 at 11:36
They are also suffering with their large amount of W-patterns in their schedule. If one flight is delayed, this straight away leads to the next one being delayed, and then they will gradually build up from there. If they are struck with a 10 minute delay in the morning, by the end of the W-pattern they could be looking at an hour long delay in the afternoon.
By: Skymonster - 15th August 2004 at 11:33
Same thing happening at Nottingham East Midlands – the local paper has nick named them “BMIMaybe”!!! They haven’t got a service backup aircraft right now (which was in the plans) and they’re subbing two a/c too. They’re spread far too thin and the end result of that, as seen above, is almost inevitable.
Andy
By: markkipling - 15th August 2004 at 00:14
FYI The Orlando delay will be due to the hurricane they are suffering at the moment
By: andrewm - 14th August 2004 at 23:10
Shamrock – why would they reduce routes to help them beat delays?
This is just a phase they are going through at MAN as no doubt one of their based aircraft has a ticky engine or something like that, that keeps causing trouble and needs sorting on a regular basis therefore causing delays.
Remember for every say 4/6 routes out of one airport operatings on a 3/4 times a week service this can be run by 1 aircraft and the reason they stagger the schedule is to allow for this one aircraft to run lots of return journeys maximising its effiency as its costs to have it resting on the ground anywhere it goes.
By: SHAMROCK321 - 14th August 2004 at 20:52
From what all the posters have been saying on here Im not surprised.the lack of aircraft they are operating and they are all over the places.Its time for bmibaby to stop trying to be in 5 or 6 places at once and concentrate on one or two specific airports.because if they dont this trend is going to continue.Its a shame really because WW are a well known name and are obviously good.The letters bmi in my opinion represent a quality airline.
By: T5 - 14th August 2004 at 20:42
All very interesting statistics, but when you consider the volume of flights for each of the airlines on a daily basis, one delay can seriously affect the figures.
I can only assume that a charter airline would operate more flights than bmibay each day from Manchester.
For example, let’s assume that A Airways has 8 flights a day from Manchester whilst Air B has just 3 flights a day, one delayed service by Air B could make it look bad – with that meaning that just 66% of flights depart on time. On the other hand, A Airways can have 3 delayed services and be ranked as being just as good as its rival.
By: bmi-star - 14th August 2004 at 20:36
Ouch looks to be a bad night for Customer Services with the charters tonight!!
(And bmi baby of course;))
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August 14, 2004 at 7:29 pm