Passengers taking holiday flights last summer faced longer delays than in 1999, official figures revealed today. The average delay to charter flights was 40 minutes, compared to 37 minutes the previous summer, and 18.5% of charter flights were more than a hour late compared with 18% in 1999, the Air Transport Users Council said.

The council said it was pleased that punctuality figures for the biggest charter airlines - such as Britannia, Monarch and Airtours - had improved, but added that the performance of JMC, formed from the merger of Flying Colours and Caledonian, had been "particularly disappointing".

The council's figures were based on an analysis from the Civil Aviation Authority and related to flights from April to October 2000, both in and out of nine UK airports, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Gatwick, Glasgow, Heathrow, Luton, Manchester, Newcastle and Stansted.

The most punctual airline in terms of having the fewest long delays was the Cypriot carrier Eurocypria Airlines, with only 10.8% of it planes more than an hour late. The lowest average delay (27.6 minutes) was achieved by Spanish carrier Futura Airlines. Worst airline was Icelandic carrier Islandsflug, which operated 49.2% of its flights last summer more than one hour late and had an average delay of nearly two hours (119.7 minutes).