WestJet, Air Canada and budget airline Frontier finished at the bottom of the pack.
In 2024, Aeromexico was recognized as the global leader in on-time arrivals, as disclosed by a yearly evaluation unveiled on Thursday. Despite facing a system breakdown that resulted in numerous flight cancellations in July, Delta Air Lines emerged as the top performer among American airlines.
According to a report from aviation-data provider Cirium, almost 87% of Aeromexico’s flights managed to reach their destination within a 15-minute window of the scheduled arrival time, a widely acknowledged metric for measuring punctuality in the airline industry.
Saudia, the flagship carrier of Saudi Arabia, ranked second worldwide, with an on-time performance rate of just over 86%, according to Cirium.
Cirium, known for its 16-year track record in assessing airlines’ timeliness, highlighted the challenges faced by the aviation sector in 2024, which included extreme weather conditions and a technological disruption during the summer. Despite these hurdles, CEO Jeremy Bowen commended the winning airlines for their ability to ensure that the majority of passengers reached their destinations on schedule.
Atlanta-based Delta achieved an on-time rate of more than 83%, good enough to rank third worldwide. The next-best U.S. carriers were United Airlines, at nearly 81%, and Alaska Airlines, at just over 79%, Cirium said.
Canada’s WestJet, Air Canada and Denver-based budget airline Frontier finished at the bottom of the pack among U.S. and Canadian carriers, with on-time ratings below 72%.
Other regional winners around the globe, according to Cirium, were Japan Airlines, low-cost Spanish carrier Iberia Express, Panama’s Copa Airlines, and South African low-cost carrier FlySafair.
Cirium said the best airport for on-time departures in 2024 was King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Nearly 87% of flights from there took off within 15 minutes of their scheduled time, Cirium said.
Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru, and Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport had the next-best departure records at over 84%. Delta took the top spot among U.S. airlines despite disruptions in July from an outage that followed a faulty upgrade that cybersecurity provider CrowdStrike sent to Microsoft computers around the world.
Delta sued CrowdStrike, claiming the outage cost the airline $500 million. CrowdStrike has defended itself partly by arguing that other airlines recovered much more quickly from the outage.
