August flight data shows which Canary Islands services are most and least punctual

Anyone booking a flight to the Canary Islands wants to arrive on time. Teneriffa News therefore analyses all departure data from the Canary Islands‘ airports. The figures on delays, punctuality rates and cancellations have enabled us to compile the ranking of Canary Islands flights for August.

The flight with the greatest deviation from the timetable was Fuerteventura to Bristol (FUE-BRS), with an average delay of 45:41 minutes. Only 43.8 per cent of the 33 flights on this route remained within our 15-minute tolerance window, beyond which this analysis does not count a departure as on time. In July, the same route recorded a delay of 25:18 minutes and a punctuality rate of 60 per cent. The rate thus fell by 16.2 points. The worst performer at that time was a different service, as noted in the analysis of Canary Islands flights for July: Gran Canaria to Katowice.

The biggest decline was seen on the Fuerteventura to Milan Malpensa (FUE-MXP) route: the delay increased from 17:12 to 45:31 minutes, whilst the on-time performance rate slipped from 62.5 to 40 per cent. However, the most significant improvement was seen on a different route. Here they are all:

The most punctual Canary Islands flights in August

Flights from Tenerife South to Cardiff (TFS-CWL) reduced their average delay from 28:46 to 11:41 minutes. The on-time rate climbed from 61.9 to 72.7 per cent. The comparison was based on the 169 routes that were included in the rankings for both months. When sorted by minutes and by punctuality rate, the routes rank differently, with two different winners.

The average deviation is calculated as the mean of all departures on a route; individual extreme outliers can sometimes raise this average significantly. The rate weights each departure equally and thus measures how reliably a service departs on a day-to-day basis. Negative values do not indicate a delay, but rather a departure ahead of the scheduled time. Only services with at least 20 flights in the month were taken into account.

In terms of average deviation, the route from Fuerteventura to Málaga (FUE-AGP) came top, whilst the most punctual route by percentage was Tenerife South to Cork (TFS-ORK). The top performer in terms of minutes saw a decline: in July, the route still achieved 100 per cent and was also at the top of the rankings then; in August, the figure was 14.3 points lower.

Two routes performed the worst: Fuerteventura to Amsterdam (FUE-AMS) achieved a performance rate of just 23.3 per cent, with 30 flights and a total delay of 32 minutes and 42 seconds. Lanzarote to London Luton (ACE-LTN) recorded a punctuality rate of 25.9 per cent, with 28 flights and a total delay of 43 minutes and 27 seconds.

Fuerteventura to London Gatwick (FUE-LGW) recorded a delay rate of 27.7 per cent and a total delay of 36 minutes and 15 seconds across 66 flights. The highest cancellation rate was recorded on the Tenerife South to Lyon (TFS-LYS) route: 9.1 per cent of flights were cancelled. Tenerife South Airport had already been identified as Spain’s most unpunctual airport over the Christmas period, whilst Tenerife North was among the country’s most punctual at that time.

The following table shows the ten routes in the Canary Islands with the smallest deviation from the flight schedule. The selection was made from a total of 173 routes. It is not a comprehensive list of all routes, but rather of those with the fewest number of flights per route:

Sorted by rate, the top ten routes appear in a different order:

When looking at individual airlines, however, a very different picture emerges, as the following article shows: