andrewbates,

Flight times aren't the time that the aircraft leaves the runway to landing on the following runway, they are what are known as block to block times, ie from leaving the gate to reaching the gate, pushback to parking brake. At airports such as Manchester, the taxi time is longer than at say Liverpool. Routings also differ as well as the economic cruising speed of the aircraft (all the airlines mentioned use different aircraft types). There are lots of variables that go in to giving a flight time, as well as average weather conditions.

Darren

It's also one of the ways they can fiddle their figures as it makes it look like their delayed flights are less so gives them a higher percentage of "on time" arrivals.

I used to have to fly Manchester to Gatwick during the 10 years I worked for FC holidays and BA flight times went from around 50 minutes on paper to around 70 minutes. The distance never got any longer and the route never changed but the constant hanging around waiting to simply get on the takeoff runway kept adding more and more time on the ground (mostly at Gatwick than Manchester).

Shell

Thanks both it makes sense now :-)