MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Heathrow is Europe's airport with the most delays

Heathrow handles more than 480,000 flights a year

The world's busiest airport, London Heathrow, saw more delays than any other major European airport last year - for the second consecutive year according to a report from the Association of European Airlines, AEA, released this week.

AEA, which represents more than 30 European carriers, said flights from all airports were still seeing an increasing number of delays, a trend that started in 2003 even before new security checks lengthened lines at airports two years ago. In Heathrow 35% of flights were delayed in 2007, followed by Gatwick with 30.2%, Paris and Rome 30.1% and Dublin, 28.1%. Brussels air terminal had the least delays with 16.9%. Germany's Duesseldorf; Vienna; Oslo and Milan-Linate also scored well for punctuality. Heathrow handles more than 480,000 flights a year and is Europe's main hub for flights to the rest of the world. In general, the airlines say 40% of flights at all airports see delays because the aircraft is not ready to depart - either because bags and passengers have not been loaded on time or there is a small problem with the plane. Most other flights are delayed because of bad weather, too much traffic at airports or failure to win speedy approval from air traffic control to allow take off. "This last category of so-called 'slot delays' highlights the perennial problem of European airspace congestion," the AEA said, blaming bottlenecks at a few key European airports. It said it was hopeful that things would change as regulators try to reduce zigzag flight route through European airspace controlled by a patchwork of national governments - which makes air travel over Europe some 70% less cost efficient than over the United States. However AEA report refers to data from associated airlines which are not all airlines operating in European airports. AEA has 33 company members among which Iberia, Spanair, Air France, Alitalia, British Airways and Olympic Airways.