According to the UK Civil Aviation Authority, Dalaman Airport is now in the top 75 world flight destinations from UK airports and is one of the three most popular charter flight destinations. But the latest figures published by the specialist aviation regulator show that you have an almost high chance of being delayed if you choose Dalaman as your destination.
 
Flight punctuality figures published by the CAA yesterday for the period April to June 2008 highlight that Dalaman Airport, Turkey is one of the least punctual. Passengers travelling in that period would have found that only 58% of flights left on time (early or within 15 minutes of the planned time) with an average delay of 32 minutes.

To put this in context no airport in the CAA study was without delays and the best performer could only achieve 87% of flights on time (Cardiff) and a delay of 7 minutes (Leeds/Bradford).

{mosimage}But, according to the figures, punctuality is getting worse. The proportion of on-time charter flights fell by eight percentage points in the second quarter of 2008 to 59 per cent, compared with 67 per cent in the same period the year before. At UK airports, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Newcastle airports, performance fell compared with the previous year.

Among the 75 scheduled and charter destinations with the most passengers in quarter two of 2008, Los Angeles International recorded the worst on-time performance of 50 per cent. New York (Newark) and New York (JFK) had the highest average delays on scheduled destinations with 30 and 28 minutes average delay respectively.

So what is going on? Well the CAA don’t spell that out in their figures and say there can be many reasons for delays some of which are outside the control of the airlines or related to certain routes.  But with such poor figures we wonder if some of the timetables need to be reviewed and more realistic times allowed especially for the tight take off and landing slots.

It will be interesting to see how the busy July to September figures work out when they are published later this year. With passenger arrivals at Dalaman up the potential for delays would seem to increase.

The CAA is the UK's specialist aviation regulator. Its regulatory activities range from making sure that the aviation industry meets the highest technical and operational safety standards to preventing holidaymakers from being stranded abroad or losing money because of tour operator insolvency.