An extra travel time needs to be budgeted to fly to India from overseas, with Indian airports emerging as the world's most-delayed airports with most frequent late arrivals into the country in 2008, according to US magazine Forbes.
Country's financial hub Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International and national capital's Indira Gandhi International airports have grabbed the first and second ranks in terms of late arrivals in the world's most-delayed airports list compiled by Forbes.
"India takes the prize as the country with most frequent late arrivals in our second annual tallying of the world's most-delayed airports," Forbes said in its latest report.
Topping the list of the world's most-delayed airport for the second year in a row, Mumbai's international airport, saw just 49.95 per cent of on-time arrivals. While about 58 per cent of its late arrivals in 2008 were delayed by 30 minutes or more, the report said.
At New Delhi's IGI airport, the percentage of on-time arrivals is 50.89 per cent in 2008 and had seen 23.3 million passengers in previous year, based on data from FlightStats, which tracks historical and real-time flight information, Forbes said.
The report stated that India was a peculiar case as its biggest airports have undertaken massive construction projects to cope with the country's rapid growth.
The most-delayed airport, Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International, opened a new taxiway in November to reduce the wait time for landing aircraft, while New Delhi's IGI Airport fully opened a third runway in October.
Bengaluru International has been ranked at the fourth place in top five in the list with on-time arrivals of 60.16 per cent.
Quoting a spokesperson of Bengaluru International Airport, Forbes said that delayed arrivals in India were largely attributed to air congestion at a flight's origin.
"There (Bengaluru International), 80 per cent of departures were on time in 2008, yet just 60 per cent of flights arrived as scheduled," the spokesperson told Forbes.
The difference between the departures and arrivals is because the faster runway exits and improved efficiency at the new airport give a boost to the percentage of flights departing on time.
Further, high on the Forbes list of airports with the lowest percentage of on-time arrivals are -- Casablanca's Mohammed V International Airport (54 per cent on time), Orio al Serio Airport near Bergamo, Italy (61 per cent), New York LaGuardia (62 per cent), Birmingham Airport in England (63 per cent) and London's Luton and Heathrow Airports (both 63 per cent on time).
Besides, a host of European airports are among those on top of the list with delayed departures, they include --Manchester Airport in northern England (49 per cent on time), Venice's Marco Polo International (54 per cent), Rome's Fiumicino International (58 per cent), Athens International (61 per cent) and Paris' Charles DeGaulle International (62 per cent on-time).