It’s not exactly the kind of ranking anyone wants to top, but Manchester Airport has officially been named the worst airport in Europe for flight delays, according to new research published by flight compensation specialists AirAdvisor.
The study, which analysed over 9.5 million flights across 46 European airports throughout the whole of 2025, ranked airports based on two factors — the percentage of flights delayed by more than 60 minutes, and the average length of those delays. Manchester came out bottom of the pile on both counts, with 6.16% of its flights delayed by an hour or more and an average delay time of 116.7 minutes — just under two hours — when things did go wrong.
For drivers doing airport transfers, that’s a significant number. A nearly two-hour average delay means pick-up times become increasingly unpredictable, and anyone meeting passengers at arrivals needs to factor in a serious buffer, particularly during peak travel periods.
Manchester wasn’t alone in making the list look bad for the UK. London Gatwick came in sixth place, with 5.24% of flights delayed by more than an hour and an average delay of 111.88 minutes, with flights to Barcelona, Malaga and Lisbon among the most affected routes. Birmingham Airport landed in tenth place, with 5.26% of flights delayed beyond 60 minutes and an average delay of 108 minutes on routes including Amsterdam, Dublin and Paris. London Stansted also featured in the top 10, making the UK the country with the most airports in the worst-performing list across Europe.
AirAdvisor weighted its rankings with 70% of the score based on the likelihood of a delay of an hour or more, and 30% on how long those delays lasted on average. The data covers the full calendar year of 2025, with the findings published in April 2026.
It’s worth noting that other studies using different methodologies paint a slightly varied picture — Eurocontrol data for 2025 highlighted Lisbon, Zurich and Nice as the worst for delayed departures — so the rankings do depend on how performance is measured. But whichever way you cut it, the UK’s major airports are consistently featuring near the bottom of European punctuality tables, and that has real consequences for passengers and drivers alike.
AirAdvisor suggests that if you regularly do runs to or from Manchester, it’s worth building extra waiting time into your schedule and making use of real-time flight tracking tools to avoid unnecessary hanging around at the terminal.
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Sources
10 Worst European Airports for 60+ Minute Delays — AirAdvisor
Manchester, Gatwick, Stansted and Birmingham Among Europe’s Worst — Travel and Tour World
Turbulence on the Tarmac: These European Airports Have the Worst Delays — Euronews
