Such figures contrast sharply with the marks awarded to Asia/Pacific in the Carlson Wagonlit Travel’s Business Travel Indicator, published in January. Disappointingly, it revealed that 61% of travelers in Australia, India and Japan are affected by flight delays.

There is no quick-fix answer to the problem, according to a report by the Performance Review Commission, which monitors the management of European air traffic. Acknowledging that punctuality is of major concern for both industry and passenger, it said performance is the result of a complex interrelated system.

Far from being an exact science, this involves airport scheduling capacity, infrastuctural, political and environmental factors, air traffic control and runway capacity. In what is known as variability, delays can be caused by the airport, the airlines, congestion in the sky, ground handlers, bad weather, tardy passengers, and reaction to late arriving flights.

If fearing all the contributory factors will not combine neatly on the day is a worry for the business traveler, spare a thought for the airlines.  Currently paying a record $72 (€56) a barrel for fuel, much of it wasted queuing for take-off or stacked waiting to land, they must also include strategic time buffers in their planning to account for predictable delays while maintaining an acceptable level of punctuality.

Each buffer costs around €50 a minute for an Airbus A320, and if they could be reduced by an average five minutes on 50% of scheduled flights through better use of airport and airline resources, some €1 billion ($1.27 billion) per annum would be saved in Europe alone.

With such considerations in mind, airlines and airports have working groups dedicated to improving and optimizing their operations. This approach is applauded in the report by the Performance Review Commission, whose subsequent workshop had its own recommendations.

Identifying “the need for a cultural change to more proactive, transparent, no-blame management of air transport operations”, it added that airlines, airports, and air traffic control should move from an “insular perspective” to a more general focus on overall performance. The entire airport community should work more closely together to develop a common understanding of objectives and set clearly defined targets.

The message calling for corporate cooperation seems to be getting through. Hall 2 at Paris Orly West airport, for example, has been completely refurbished by Paris Airports Authority and Air France. It now includes streamlined boarding, disembarkation, security and check-in areas, and an automatic sorting system to speed baggage to the aircraft.

“Thanks to the dedication and continued efforts of Air France teams,” says Jean-Cyril Spinetta, the airline's chairman and CEO, “operational efficiency and flight punctuality are now among the best in Europe.”

Meanwhile, back in the un-reconstituted world, delays will occur as sure as night follows day, and a travel management company (TMC) will ride to the rescue – or at least point out the areas travelers should research.

Says Norman Gage, director of UK-based Advantage Business Travel: “Airlines make it difficult for travel management companies to let their customers know whether there is a delay or not.

So the job of a business travel agent should be to monitor the continual offenders in delayed or cancelled flights in order to alert their customers and, if necessary, find a suitable flight with a more reliable airline.”

Business travelers without a TMC or lacking the resources to scrutinize airline records can always accept the inevitable and while away the wait with a good book.