Manchester Airport (MAN) disrupted flights slightly more often than the country as a whole in 2025: of 185,355 scheduled flights, 1.8% were cancelled or landed at least three hours late, against an average of 1.6% across 25 UK airports. The headline figure tells you little about any particular trip, because the spread between routes is huge: from fractions of a per cent on the Rome route to 6.6% on flights to Bahrain. Two things usually decide it: where you are flying and who is flying you. These are punctuality statistics from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) covering the whole of 2025, outbound and return flights together. They do not replace today's departures board: what happens to your flight on the day will come from the airline and the airport.
Routes and carriers: where the risk is higher
From Manchester in 2025 there were 92 routes, each with at least 500 flights. The worst performer was Bahrain: 525 flights, 6.6% disrupted. Next come short domestic routes and island hops: Belfast City 5.4%, Guernsey 5.3%, Isle of Man 3.2%. Small aircraft fly these, and weather knocks them off schedule more easily. The best route is Rome (Ciampino): 1,292 flights and just 0.3%. The busiest route, Dublin with 9,412 flights, runs slightly worse than the airport average: 2.1%.
The large airlines show a steadier picture. Jet2 disrupted 0.9% of flights, Ryanair 1.1%, easyJet UK 2.0%. Worst among carriers with 500+ flights were the regional Aer Lingus UK (8.7%) and Loganair (3.2%).
Winter, weather and money for a disrupted flight
EUROCONTROL, as Network Manager, imposed a weather restriction on arrivals at Manchester on 3.8% of days between January 2018 and September 2026. January and December fare worst, at 9% of days each. Whether it was fog or wind shows up in the reports on the Manchester weather page, which also has a month-by-month breakdown. Such delays carry no compensation: weather and air traffic control decisions count as extraordinary circumstances for the airline, as do strikes by outside services and security threats. A cancellation announced 14 days or more in advance pays nothing either.
So treat the 1.8% as a ceiling on possible payouts. One further adjustment: the CAA records lateness at the UK terminal, while UK261 measures it on arrival at the final destination. The amount depends on route length, and it is already filled in for each route in the table: £220 up to 1,500 km, £350 for 1,500–3,500 km, and on long-haul routes £260 for a 3–4 hour delay and £520 for longer. For Bahrain, 5,262 km away, that means up to £520. On the return flight from an EU country, EU261 applies (€250 / €400 / €600) if the operator is European, or UK261 if it is British. How to submit a claim is set out by the CAA: delays and cancellations.