Trevor Laffan: Airline delays appear to be worsening, but why is that?

Early last year, I booked a flight for my wife and myself from Larnaca in Cyprus to London Gatwick with Wizz Air. We were meant to fly home on November 29, 2025.

I also booked two seats on a Ryanair flight to take us the rest of the way from Gatwick to Cork.

It should have been a straight-forward trip, except it wasn’t.

Only a short time after paying the fare to Wizz Air, I got an email from them advising me that the flight was cancelled.

That meant the Ryanair flights were of no use to me either and I had to forfeit them.

I got a refund from Wizz Air and rebooked with them for December 12, and booked two new flights with Ryanair.

We arrived at Larnaca Airport on that date at 10.30am for the 12.20pm flight, but soon after arriving, I received an email from Wizz Air advising me that the flight was delayed by two hours and 20 minutes.

That meant we had no hope of making the Ryanair flight to Cork, so we had no choice but to forfeit them for the second time.

With no other way of getting home, we had to stay overnight in Gatwick and fly home the following day, Saturday.

We took a room in one of the Premier Inn Hotels which cost us just over €100. The only Ryanair flights to Cork the following day were leaving at 6pm at a cost of €102 each, and again we had no choice but to take them.

The following day, we got to the airport and waited for the gate number to appear on the departures screen. Then I got a message on the Ryanair app that the flight to Cork was delayed by two hours until 8pm.

The message said that there had been a slight technical problem with the aircraft, that had since been resolved.

It was a further disappointment, but what can you do?

We accepted it as one of those things that happens occasionally, but when we got to the departure gate, a Ryanair staff member made an announcement about boarding and apologised for the delay, which was due, she said, to adverse weather conditions.

When we eventually got on the plane, there was a further announcement and another apology for the delay from the captain, but this time, he cited illness and having to find a replacement crew member as the cause of the problem.

So, which was it?

The cause of the delay doesn’t really make any difference either way, but it would be nice to think the airline personnel were giving the genuine reason for the delay, and not giving the appearance of just fobbing us off with the first thing that came into their heads.

This isn’t the first time we’ve experienced cancellations and delays, certainly in our dealings with Wizz Air. We’ve continued with them because there aren’t too many options available to us from Larnaca that link up with connecting flights to Cork.

I don’t remember having so much hassle in the past, but delays and cancellations seem to be happening with monotonous regularity in recent times.

Most of the people I spoke to in Cyprus who travelled out through the UK experienced delays of at least one hour. Many of them spoke of sitting on the tarmac for long periods before take-off, so what is going on?

Are the skies becoming like the M50? That motorway in Dublin is often described as the country’s biggest car park because it is so congested.

It’s easy to imagine the flight paths could be suffering from a similar issue.

I’m always amazed when I see the never-ending stream of a aircraft landing and departing London airports, for example.

Or is it down to something else? Is there a shortage of aircraft or a shortage of runways or a shortage of staff?

Do we need more air traffic controllers or better management of them, and are decisions always made with the best interest of the passengers in mind?

I have often wondered why it is necessary to rush passengers through the departure gate and onto the plane, only to find that the aircraft is facing a lengthy wait on the tarmac. They push the plane back from its stand onto the runway where it can sit for an hour or more.

That’s something that’s becoming much more common, in my experience, and there is a reason for that.

I’m told, once the aircraft has left its stand, it is officially declared to have departed. That’s good for the airline’s reputation, and important too as they can claim another flight has left on time.

Which?, the UK travel magazine, recently wrote about delays and cancellations. The magazine checked departure data for six of the biggest airlines between May, 2024, and April, 2025, and all were less punctual now than pre-pandemic (2019), according to flight data from airline regulator the Civil Aviation Authority.

Tui was the worst of the six big UK airlines Which? reviewed for punctuality (that is, take-off within 15 minutes of schedule) between those dates, with the lowest average percentage of on-time departures.

It also had the second-highest percentage of delays over three hours, after Wizz Air.

Figures show that average on-time departures across the board have slipped from 2019 levels, which means you’re more likely to be inconvenienced by delays in 2025 than in 2019.

But why?

Bad weather, shortage of aircraft, staff issues, aircraft malfunctions, lack of space at airports, shortage of air traffic controllers and official strike action can all upset the apple cart.

A slight delay early in the day can have a knock-on effect that creates a more significant delay as the day goes on.

Taking all that into consideration, it’s a wonder we ever get off the ground.