Paris-CDG tops France's most-delayed airport list

Nearly 300 flights a day from airports in France were affected by delays or cancellations in the first six months of 2019, according to a study.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for those who have flown from Paris's main airport, Roissy-Charles de Gaulle had the worst figures of the country's nine busiest airports, according to the AirHelp passenger law website.

Nearly one in four flights (24%) were delayed by 15 minutes or more, while 730 of the 108,400 scheduled services from the airport between January 1 and June 30, 2019, were cancelled altogether - though the site noted those figures were an improvement on the same period in 2018.

Marseille ranked second in the worst-performing poll, with a delay-and-cancellation rate of 21% from 13,000 flights . It was followed by Nice, where one plane in five (20%) of a total of 25,000 scheduled flights were disrupted in the first six months of the year. Paris-Orly was fourth, with an 18% disruption rate.

Then came Nantes, with 17%, while Bordeaux, Toulouse and Lyon airports all recorded 15% rates. The third "Parisian" airport, Beauvais, saw 13% of flights disrupted, the website said.

In total, between January 1 and June 30, "in France, every day more than 280 flights did not take off as planned," AirHelp told Le Figaro.

There is some good news, however. A second study, looking at airport performances across the whole of 2018, predicted that this year will be quieter in terms of disruption than the previous one - a year that was punctuated by a series of strikes.

Oskar de Felice, a legal expert at Flightright, said: "The summer of 2019 should certainly be calmer than last year. The airlines have learned from previous chaos and have taken the necessary measures.

"The social context seems to have calmed down, which suggests that there will be fewer strikes this year. However, and by experience, any disruption (cancellations, delays, overbooking) can lead to a "snowball effect" that could affect all airports and airspace."

The Flightright study of regional airports found Rennes to be the capital of cancellations, with 4% of its total number of flights in 2018 called off. The Brittany hub finished just ahead of Clermont-Ferrand (3.88%), Pau-Pyrénées (2.95%), Marseille (2.92%) and Toulon (2.89%). The lowest cancellation rates were all on the island of Corsica, with Calvi is at the top of the ranking (0.42% cancellations) ahead of Ajaccio (0.76%), Beauvais (1.02%), Bastia (1.04%) and Figari (1.27%).

Unfortunately, when it comes to delays, the Isle of Beauty's airports fare less well. Figari leads the ranking with 23.4% of its flights late, ahead of Toulon (19.44%), Biarritz (16.51%), Ajaccio (16.16%) and Bastia (14.90%).

On the other hand, the French airports where passengers were most likely to leave on time are: Pau-Pyrénées (5.8% of flights late), Brest (9.23%), Lille (10.18%), Montpellier (10.44%) and Strasbourg (10.78%).