Travel with Katie Butler: UK's best and worst airports for flight delays

I will be flying from East Midlands Airport which is a great little airport and very easy to get to –straight down the M1.

Even better, the airport has recently been named as the airport having the shortest flight delays across airports throughout the whole of the UK.

East Midlands Airport passengers were, on average, delayed by just 13 minutes per departing flight according to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) data.

The worst airport for delays is Birmingham, at 30 minutes per departing flight, followed with Manchester second from bottom at 29 minutes.

Leeds Bradford Airport fared in the middle at 20 minutes, coming in joint 13th alongside Southend Airport.

As we all know it was a difficult and extremely chaotic year last year for the aviation industry due to huge staff shortages and the unprecedented surge in demand for overseas holidays.

Thankfully, so far, we are hearing of much better experiences at the airports and security queues appear to be under control too.

Of course, we are now creeping up to the start of the busy summer season and we could start to hear differently.

However, I am optimistic that this year will be far less chaotic at the airports and let’s face it – it couldn't actually be much worse.

World Health Organization (WHO) officials have said COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency marking a symbolic end to the pandemic.

WHO Director-General said: “It's with great hope that I declare COVID-19 over as a global health emergency.”

The decision was made on May 4 and follows the discontinuation of the NHS COVID app which was switched off last month.

Covid was declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020, triggering unprecedented travel restrictions across the world and we never in a million years thought it would remain around forever.

Thankfully, the world is learning to live with the virus and we can get our lives back on track.

Last week Jet2 marked the first of its brand-new Airbus A321 neo aircraft coming into service at Manchester airport.

The A321 neo demonstrates Jet2's commitment to sustainability and its vision to become one of the leading brands in sustainable air travel as the aircraft deliver an almost 20 per cent reduction in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions per seat against previous generation single aisle aircraft.

I literally can't wait to get onboard one of these new planes!

Believe it or not, summer 2025 was our best selling season last week.

This was due to the launch of the P&O Cruise programme for 2025 and the early bookings.

Turkey popped up as the top selling destination last week followed closely with Majorca.

After cruising for 2025 the next most popular season was May and June departures.

So, a real mixed bag of super advance bookings and late deals.