Short-notice flight cancellations at UK airports methodology
Updated 9 September 2026
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Introduction
The Department for Transport (DfT) analysis of Cirium flight status data shows monthly short-notice cancellations at UK airports, compared with 2025 baselines.
This analysis is based on all commercial passenger flights arriving and departing from UK airports. Flights arriving and departing from crown dependencies are not included in this analysis.
Calculating flights removed from the schedule
To calculate the percentage of flights that have been cancelled in a month, all flights assigned the status ‘cancelled’ are added together and divided by the total number of flights with a reported status (including cancellations).
Data used for this analysis
DfT procure ‘on-time performance data’ from Cirium Aviation Analytics. Cirium is a trusted source of analytics in the aviation industry. They unify data across fleets, schedules, flights and traffic and fares to give the industry a single, authoritative view of what is happening and what comes next.
Cirium draws from over 3,000 live data sources, processing more than 25 million updates daily. No single source is taken at face value.
Inputs are compared, validated and reconciled before the data reaches customers. Cirium operates independently of any airline, airport or manufacturer, which means its benchmarks and analytics carry no commercial bias. ‘On-time performance’ data is used industry-wide because it is trusted as impartial.
All data in this publication is held as management information by DfT.
Management information (MI) in government refers to data that is collated and used in the normal course of business to inform operational delivery, policy development or the management of organisational performance.
Further information
For more information, contact: AviationResilienceDataRequests@dft.gov.uk.