There was more bad news for British Airways today as it was named the worst performing of all Europe's major airlines.

A report compiled by the Association of European Airlines (AEA) showed that BA passengers were more likely to encounter delays than people travelling on any other airline.

Between April and June, 35.7% of short or medium haul flights did not arrive on time, and 32.7% were delayed on departure.

The airline's performance on long haul flights was even worse with 44% of these arriving late and 36.6% departing later than scheduled.

The figures come after BA was fined almost £270 million for price-fixing after colluding over fuel surcharges with Virgin Atlantic.

For every 1,000 passengers travelling in the three months between April and June, AEA found that an average of 28 bags were delayed on BA flights compared with three bags for every 1,000 Air Malta travellers.

Air France and Lufthansa also performed significantly better than BA in this category.

A continued baggage crisis at Heathrow is expected to exacerbate the problem during the summer holidays, and on Tuesday, travellers were advised not to check in their bags but to carry them as hand-luggage.

A total of 28 airlines provided punctuality figures, while 23 gave baggage details.