London Gatwick is the UK airport where passengers face the most delays, according to new data.

The average delay per flight was higher at the airport, which is 28 miles south of London in West Sussex, than any other in the UK.

Information from the Civil Aviation Authority analysed by the BBC showed that from January 2015 to March 2016, passengers were delayed by an average of 18 minutes at Gatwick.

At London Heathrow, the average delay was 13 minutes.

The flight in the UK most troubled by delays was a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Manchester to New York's John F Kennedy Airport, which was late on eight out of 10 recorded flights in 2015 and delayed by an average of 88 minutes.

A spokeswoman for Gatwick Airport told the BBC: "We regret any delays our passengers experience however several incidents beyond Gatwick's control influenced the airport's performance during this period, including numerous air traffic control strikes across European airspace, impacting the airport's whole flight schedule including our long haul routes.

"Gatwick has more flights to Europe than any UK airport and can therefore be impacted disproportionately by events on the continent."

Tim Alderslade, chief executive of the British Air Transport Association (BATA), the trade body for UK-registered airlines, said: "UK airlines have to provide good customer service to attract passengers in the highly competitive market in which they operate.

"Delays occur for a variety of reasons - for example, this year European aviation has experienced huge turmoil with ATC strikes in France causing hundreds of cancellations and time-consuming detours.

"Far too many journeys are also being disrupted by a lack of resilience in our airspace - the UK's critical but invisible infrastructure - and more needs to be done by the Government to prioritise and support the modernisation of our airspace so that we can safely and effectively handle the 350 million passengers and 3.1 million aircraft that we expect to see in our skies by 2030."