When’s the best time to fly? Airports reveal their calmest periods for flight departures

Many UK airports are experiencing their busiest summer in history, with more British people flying away on holiday than ever before.

Anyone who has endured the “first wave” of flights – typically starting before 6am and continuing to around 8am – will know that this is when airports are at their busiest. Airlines need to get airborne as early in the day as possible, extracting the maximum productivity from their planes and crew.

The pressure on ground transport, security checkpoints, cafes and shops is highest early in the morning.

Conversely, booking a flight when most passengers have already left the ground means progress through the airport is much easier. While budget airlines will typically plan two or three rotations (there-and-back trips) for each aircraft in the course of a day, the pressure is always highest early on.

But at what point in the day does the magic moment occur when half the passengers have departed?

The Independent has asked all the top UK airports. Assuming flights start leaving at 6am and finish at 11pm, if departures were evenly spread, the halfway point would be 2.30pm. In practice, though, all but one of the airports have their midway moment earlier. The answers vary sharply between airports, and can also depend on the day of the week. Birmingham is earliest at 8am, Southampton latest at 2.50pm.

This is your time planner for smoother flying.

Birmingham: 8am

The West Midlands airport is the only one in England that has been given permission to relax the “liquids rule” – which is good news considering the scale of the first wave of flights. Birmingham is seeing some of its busiest days ever, with more than 26,000 departing passengers – half of whom “will leave before eight o'clock in the morning” according to Al Titterington, the terminal operations director speaking to The Independent’s daily travel podcast.

Manchester: 11am

“We reached the halfway point today at just after 11am,” a spokesperson told me. “That is broadly the same most days. Terminal 3 is the slight outlier in that it gets to halfway at around 9.30am most days.” That terminal is the low-cost hub for easyJet and Ryanair.

Belfast International: 11.20am

The team at the main Northern Ireland airport took the trouble to send an entire week’s flying programme, in which the earliest halfway time was 9.30am (on Saturday) and the latest 1.30pm (on Sunday). The average is relatively early.

Edinburgh: 12 noon

Scotland’s busiest airport says the midway moment fluctuates between 11am and 1pm, depending on the day’s schedule.

Gatwick: 12.30pm

The second-busiest UK airport is the main base for easyJet, and also handles a fair number of British Airways, Wizz Air and Vueling short-haul flights. It also has some extremely early departures – starting with Wizz Air at 5.20am to Malaga, with a further 16 before 6am. Yet with some long-haul departures to the US, Caribbean, Asia and Gulf in the afternoon and evening, the halfway point is surprisingly late.

Bristol: 12.30pm

Ten flights are scheduled to leave the West of England hub in the 10 minutes from 5.55am, as Ryanair, Jet2 and easyJet get their first wave away. But in the afternoon there are plenty of Canary Islands and Turkish flights to balance things out.

Liverpool: 12.30pm

Many Irish Sea services (sometimes as late as 11.50pm to Dublin on Ryanair) mean departures across the day. “Our ‘first wave’ from around 6am to 8.30am remains the busiest concentrated period of the day still,” says a spokesperson.

Luton: 1pm

With a busy eastern European operation on Wizz Air and a wide spread of departure times, the halfway point at which 15,000 of the day’s passengers have left is lunchtime.

Glasgow: 1.10pm

A busy programme domestic routes, including a final flight of the night to Bristol at 10pm, makes the halfway passenger point at Scotland’s second-busiest airport relatively late.

Stansted: 1.30pm

The “first” flight out of the day is actually a very late-night service on Pegasus to Istanbul, departing at 12.20am. Budget airline operations on Jet2 and Ryanair start at around 5.45am. While the midway moment is early afternoon, any time after around 9am is relatively calm. Nobody does a first wave quite like Stansted.

Newcastle: 1.45pm

The Emirates departure to Dubai is at 2.15pm, keeping the airport busy to early afternoon. Add in a few late trips to Turkey and you can see why the halfway point is relatively late.

Heathrow: 2.15pm

The UK’s main air hub has a different pattern of flights from all other UK airports. Early morning is peak time for arrivals (with both runways used for touchdowns between 6am and 7am), while few wide-bodied aircraft get going much before 9am. With another peak for departures in late evening, it is no surprise that the halfway point is well into the afternoon.

Aberdeen: 2.25pm

With a first flight out at 6am to Amsterdam, and a final departure scheduled for 9pm or later, the midpoint strikes me as surprisingly late. Lots of Scottish “domestics” on Loganair, plus regular London Heathrow departures, make it late.

Southampton: 2.50pm

The Hampshire airport has a different pattern to most other airports, with its primary focus on the Channel Islands and UK domestic routes. If you want to work at an airport but also enjoy a lie-in, Southampton is the one to go for; the first flight does not leave until 8am (to Guernsey), with the last at 8pm (to Dublin).