Delta Air Lines became only the fourth-most on-time airline in the U.S. last month, according to data from aviation analytics company Cirium. Their January statistics are out:
- Delta was behind Southwest – the on-time leader – along with Alaska Airlines which perennially performs near the top. Spirit Airlines also beat out Delta in January.
- Notably, Delta also cancelled a higher percentage of flights than those carriers as well.
- United and American followed right behind Delta, with all of these arriving on-time at least 80% of the time. (American, which was more affected by weather in January, cancelled more flights than other North American carriers.)
- JetBlue and Frontier were bottom-performers among U.S. carriers, as they often are. And Canadian airlines fared worse, which is also consistent with expectations.
In Europe, Iberia, Vueling, and ITA outperformed while Lufthansa was worst.
The most on-time airports often correspond to on-time airlines. Airline operations influence performance a lot, and a region’s weather does too.
Globally, the most on-time airport was Honolulu, which is usually shielded from the weather. Always a leader, Alaska Airlines is likely to improve on-time statistics thanks to their acquisition of Hawaiian and operations from the islands.
Honolulu
Nine of the top 15 most on-time large airports were in the U.S.
