Delta Air Lines is the most on-time airline in North America
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New data shows Delta Air Lines is the most on-time airline in all of North America. Cirium just released its on-time performance numbers for 2019. Delta was also the number No. 3 worldwide according to the travel and data analytics company, which released its findings on Thursday. As we previously reported, Aeroflot was the most punctual in the world.
Cirium releases the report every year, and shares the world’s best performing airlines and airports for on time ratings. We’ll share the airports data soon. Across all 10 network airlines in North America, performance improved by 1% year over year with an average on-time performance of 79.93%.
Alaska Airlines also performed well in the annual review, placing second. Delta has now taken top honors the past three years in a row. Rounding out the top five were No. 3 Southwest (more than 81.32% on-time), No. 4 Spirit (81.19%) and American (79.89%). American’s numbers came despite a dispute with mechanics that the airline says created widespread operational issues.
Cirium analysts wrote, “Southwest Airlines is another worthy runner-up, having finished in third place despite overcoming challenges with recent maintenance delays in the first half of the year, as well as the impact of the 737 MAX groundings.”
Overall, Southwest Airlines, Allegiant Air, WestJet, JetBlue and Frontier all improved on-time performance from 2018.
Cirium also pointed out that ninth-ranked JetBlue improved its performance slightly this year.
Delta Air Lines also took third place in the “global mainline” category with 85.7% of flights arriving on time.
Jeremy Bowen, Cirium CEO, said: “Airlines and airports which consistently operate on time and go that extra mile for their customers deserve to be recognized in an increasingly competitive environment and should be justifiably proud of reaching such a world-class industry standard.”
New Delta partner, Latin American airline LATAM was the top ranking airline in the category of “global network airline” with 86.7% of the flights in its network arriving on time. ANA was No. 2 with 86.5% of its flights on time. Delta was number in this category as well followed closely by Japan Airlines and Iberia.
Cirium analyzed 600 sources and more than 100,000 flights a day to compile the ratings.
A timely reminder from Cirium — time is money.
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Additional reporting by Victoria Walker.
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