How we calculate these figures

The source is the CAA’s monthly punctuality statistics (“Full analysis Arrival Departure” files), which record — for every airport-pair and airline — how many flights operated, how many were cancelled, the share landing in each lateness band, and the average delay. We analyse departures from UK reporting airports. The CAA publishes with roughly a two-month lag; the current dataset is April 2026, refreshed automatically each month.

• 15m+ late— the share of flights arriving 15 minutes or more behind schedule (the sum of the CAA’s 16–30, 31–60, 61–120, 121–180, 181–360 and 360+ minute bands).
• 3h+ late— the share arriving 3 hours or more late: the CAA’s 181–360 and 360+ minute bands. Three hours matters because it is the UK261 compensation threshold.
• Cancelled — cancellations as a share of all scheduled flights (operated + cancelled).
• Average delay— the CAA’s average delay in minutes, weighted by each service’s flight count when we aggregate across airlines or routes.
• Compensation likelihood index — our derived metric: the share of flights hit by a compensation-relevant disruption, i.e. 3h+ late % + cancelled %. The CAA does not publish this number; we compute it because it is the single figure that matters for UK261 rights. It measures how often disruptions occur, before considering whether the airline was at fault — so it is an upper bound on claimable flights, never a promise.

Percentages from small samples mislead, so we apply floors before publishing anything: a route needs at least 150 flights in the month (90 for long-haul, which flies less often), an airline at least 400 UK departures, and an airline needs 20+ flights on a specific route to appear in that route’s comparison table. We publish up to 90 routes per month, reserving slots for medium and long-haul so the higher-payout routes searchers look for aren’t crowded out by short-haul volume. Right now that yields 90 routes and 23 airlines.

Each monthly refresh also archives that month’s figures, and the trend tables on route and airline pages read from this archive (currently 4 months: January 2026, February 2026, March 2026, April 2026). A month is missing from an entity’s trend when it fell below the sample floor that month — gaps are honest, not bugs.

• Cause. The CAA data does not say whya flight was late. UK261 compensation requires the disruption to be the airline’s fault — extraordinary circumstances (extreme weather, ATC strikes) don’t qualify. Our statistics can’t make that call for any individual flight.
• Your flight. A monthly average is not your journey. A route with a clean month can still have delayed you; a disruption-prone route may have flown you on time. The checker is about your specific flight; the statistics are context.
• Guarantees. Everything here is an estimate for information purposes — not legal advice, and never a promise of payment.

We publish derivedmetrics — rates, weighted averages and our index — with attribution on every data page, in line with the CAA’s data terms. We do not redistribute or resell the raw CAA feed; the original data is freely available from the CAA at the link above. This site is not affiliated with or endorsed by the CAA or any airline.

Owedly is built and maintained by Mohammed Arafat Khot, independent UK air-passenger-rights researcher. The UK261 amounts and eligibility rules in the checker are hardcoded from the official gov.uk and CAA guidance and re-verified against those sources at least yearly — last verified 8 July 2026. Questions or corrections: khotarafat@gmail.com.