A major UK airport has been named the worst in the country for cancelled flights. Travel compensation specialists, AirAdvisor, analysed 2025 flight data from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to find which airports cancel the most flights.

The CAA defines a cancelled flight as the non-operation of a previously planned flight, announced less than 24 hours before or after its scheduled departure time by an airline (not airport). And for the second year in a row, Southampton  Airport has been named the worst major airport in the UK for flight cancellations, with the number of flights grounded at the South coast hub almost three times higher than the national average.

According to the CAA’s data, between January and November 2025, around 3% of scheduled services at Southampton Airport were scrapped. This was a slight improvement compared to 2024, when 3.3% of flights at the hub were cancelled. 

A spokesperson for Southampton Airport said: “An airline’s decision to reluctantly cancel a flight can be due to a number of factors including weather issues, air traffic congestion, delayed arrivals or technical issues with aircraft. We will continue to work with our airline partners and their handling agents to support them in their operations.”

Other airports with a higher rate of grounded services than the national average (1.09%) included Aberdeen (1.83%), Glasgow (1.63%), London City (1.48%) and Heathrow (1.36%). 

Only 0.17% of flights from Bournemouth Airport were cancelled between January and November last year, giving the airport the best rating of the 20 hubs covered in the analysis. 

Airports that performed well in the rankings included Luton, Stansted, East Midlands International, Bristol and Belfast International, where cancellations were less than half the national average.

AirAdvisor found that in 2025, cancellations fell compared to the same period in 2024 across the UK’s 20 largest airports by passenger numbers. 

Between January and November 2025, 1.09% of flights at the UK’s 20 busiest airports were cancelled, down from 1.45% during the same period in 2024, in what a leading air passenger rights expert is describing as a “sigh of relief” for flyers. 

The UK’s worst major airports for cancelled flights (percentage of flights cancelled between January and November 2025)