To be on time for a meeting or a conference is pivotal for a travel professional. Therefore, it is important to choose airlines that will guarantee this plus, if the plane is doing a stopover, choose airports that are just as efficient.

At the top of the list, airBaltic and Brussels South Charleroi are the best airline and airport worldwide for on-time performance.

Copa made it to the second place as the best performing globally, followed by Azul, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways.

Meanwhile, UK airlines and airports had inconsistent results in the annual rankings from flight intelligence specialist OAG.

At a global level, Monarch is the highest placed UK airline, in 14th, followed by Flyby in 17th. EasyJet was 50th and British Airways 70th.

AirBaltic leads the EMEA region top ten with 94% of its flights on time, followed by Finnair, Australia, LOT, KLM, SAS, Monarch, Iberia, Flybe and Qatar Airways.

Simultaneously, the best performing airports in the EMEA region are Brussels South Charleroi, Stavanger, Bergen, Cologne Bonn, Warsaw, Bristol, Hannover, Copenhagen, Moscow Sheremetyevo and Helsinski.

According to OAG's rankings, the top 20 performing large airports in OAG's rankings are Tokyo Haneda, followed by Munich, Sao Paulo Guarulhos, Minneapolis and Sydney. Notably missing out on the top 20 are London Heathrow, Beijing and Hong Kong.

Runaway capacity of course continues to be an issue for the UK, says John Grant, senior analyst, OAG. Heathrow and Gatwick's OTP ratings are both down on last year, a real reflection of how far those airports are stretched for capacity.

To qualify for inclusion in the OAG Punctuality League, the OAG Schedules database has to receive 80% of all scheduled flights and and from an airport, therefore there were some considerable omissions.

If business travel matches your personality and your current circumstances, it can have countless benefits. If you like traveling and are looking to jump-start your career, business traveling has many advantages in store for you; however, if you are a single parent with many responsibilities who is not that interested in traveling, then the benefits of your profession when it comes to corporate traveling might not be that obvious to you.

However, for those whose situation and personality matches with business traveling, this will be a massive job perk for many reasons.

First, you will enjoy all that a new place has to offer. Some people enjoy traveling, and provide the right time off work and resources, they will travel more. Business traveling provides them the opportunity to get to see new places as part of their job, so they don't need to take holidays, and with everything paid for, so they don't need those resources. This allows them to put a dot on the world map to point at a new place they've visited and feel satisfied that they got to see something new.

If you are a food lover, this means trying out the best restaurants, food menus and food stalls around the country - or even the world. If you like to explore new places, get knowledge as you do that, and learn the history, this means on your leisure time, you can explore new museums and historical sites.

Even if the company is paying for your trip and expenses, you might still be able to enjoy personal miles. Apart from collecting miles with your flight, you can also collect miles by using your credit card linked to collecting miles in certain places, so make sure you do your research and collect as many miles as you can so you can save it for your holidays. It's like a bonus.

As a frequent traveler, you can also get some options as pre-check to speed up the process of getting through security lines. That will make your trip run more smoothly - less stressful and less of a hassle.

It can boost your business as well, as traveling may allow you to stay up to date with the latest trends in the world and adapt your company accordingly to be more competitive in the global market.

If you can prove to your boss that you are productive, effective, and reliable while traveling for business, you might secure yourself a virtual office and work from any location if that is what you want. This might be an advantage to spice things up and keep you from going to the office, but working off-shore from exciting locations. However, it is true that some people need an office to go to and the contact with other colleagues to boost productivity, so this is obviously not for everyone.

Traveling can also make you more adaptable to new circumstances. Business traveling puts you in situations that require you to think fast and solve problems that you might not find in daily life, such as getting a flight canceled, struggle to find a hotel room in a foreign city, economic transaction or getting your luggage stole. These lessons make you more adaptable to circumstances and more appreciated by employers, friends and family.

Corporate traveling also allows you to meet new people. In your daily life, you are always surrounded by the same people, which is great to nurture long-lasting relationships; however, this closes your path to meet new people who might open up a new world for you, allow you to have new experiences, new ways of thinking, new opportunities. You might even meet a love interest, a close friend or a future employer or business partner.

As you visit a new place, you are more likely to experience new things and find new ways or recreation. In fact, it seems like a duty while you are traveling. You might try new water sports if the region allows that or hiking in the mountain. Either way, a new place is a new and perhaps different setting that allows you to do different things from what you'd normally do at your hometown.

Traveling also gives you a lesson in prioritizing health. As it is hard to work out while you are traveling, it makes you appreciate it more and realize how much you need it. Therefore, always try to use the fitness centers at the hotels, take the gear you need and challenge yourself to go for a run around the city and creating a habit of exercising. This will help your body and mind, and health in general.

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it - Alistair Cooke

Professional is not a label you give yourself - it's a description you hope others apply to you. - David Maister

If you can dream it, you can do it. The way to get started is to quit talking and start doing. - Walt Disney, Co-Founder of Walt Disney Productions

Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success. - Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter

So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard. - Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr

If you're not making mistakes, then you're not making decisions -Catherine Cook, co-founder of MeetMe 

It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently. I don't look to jump over seven-foot bars, I look for one-foot bars that I can step over. - Warner Buffet, CEP of Berkshire Hathaway

I've not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. - Thomas Edison, American inventor and businessman

If you don't build your dream, someone will hire you to help build theirs. - Tony Gaskins, motivational speaker

Don't play games that you don't understand, even if you see lots of other people making money from them. - Tony Hsieh, CEP of Zappos

Screw it. Let's do it You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing and by falling over. - Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group

Never give up, because you never know if the next try is going to be the one that works. - Mary Kay, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics

The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be. - Reid Hoffman

You shouldn't focus on why you can't do something, which is what most people do. You should focus on why perhaps you can, and be one of the exceptions. -Steve Case, Co-Founder and CEP of AOL.

Even though the main purpose of a business trip is the meeting, the presentation or the conference you are attending, it is recommended to perform other activities in your destination. During business trips, there is usually no time for sightseeing or venturing out your hotel room or convention centre. However, since you are already in a foreign city boasting a number of surprising new activities, why waste the opportunity to explore a new destination?

Take an hour or two to take part in a local activity or sporting event, go to the gym or run across the city in a race organized by your hotel. Physical activity is paramount to keep stress levels down, to keep your head clear, keep yourself active and sharp for your business activities, and good for your health in general.

If you are constrained by time, make it a plan to always visit one local shop or have the local coffee in every place you travel to - this is a good trick to make your travels more distinctive and pleasurable.

For instance, if you are visiting New York City, one of the biggest cities for business, you could spend your lunch on a helicopter tour, getting a chance to admire the city's most iconic sites; take advantage of a business dinner to explore NYC's gastronomic offer. If you have some downtime, you can spend a relaxing two hours on a twilight sail of the Hudson. You can always push your trip back home a few hours to squeeze a few other activities.

In the latter years, business travelers have increasingly tried to incorporate leisure activities into their business trips. This practice has become more popular in the new century - more than two thirds of frequent business travelers reported that they combined leisure activities with business trips.

Part of this trend includes circumstances in which spouses or children tag along on business trips for a few added-in days of family fun. However, another part involves solitary activities - either leisure or sports - specially among younger business travelers.

Airlines, intranet sites and travel companies have become aware of this trend and have seen the opportunity of marketing more diversions and offer travel packages. These have become known as custom trips - leisure trips added onto a business trip. These are more common when the business trips take longer times, for instance weeks, so these travel companies promote a weekend away in a location near the destination. So it is trip within a trip. This is an original way to spice up the trip and make it feel less lonely as business travelers are on their own in a foreign place.

Studies show that business travelers' favorite leisure activity is going out for a meal. After this, they have answer that the second preferred activity is taking a tour/participating in a local activity. Next, they mentioned visiting a friend or woking. Other activities include shopping, catching up on reading, exercise, browsing the Internet, watching TV, going to bars, using the hotel spa facilities and services, and going to a local networking event.