To provide a clearer picture, aviation analytics firm Cirium has analyzed the 2024 statistics to identify the top airlines globally, including the top 10 in North America.
For Canadians, this information might be hard to swallow… before we delve into airlines prone to delays, let’s first consider those with the highest cancellation rates.
American Airlines tops the list in terms of cancellations, with 28,649 flights scrapped in 2024. However, they operated the most flights overall, totaling 2,177,418, which means only 1.31 percent were canceled.
This is not a bad figure by any means.
In contrast, Air Canada had 10,816 cancellations out of 386,082 flights, resulting in a 2.8 percent cancellation rate. Cirium’s list places Cape Air at the bottom, a small airline that began in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Alarmingly, it cancels approximately one out of every 17 flights – with 5,069 out of 83,101 flights canceled last year, making it a 6 percent cancellation rate.
Now, let’s focus on the ‘top 10 winners’ among North American airlines.
While Cape Air didn’t make the list, Delta Air Lines emerged as the leader. It was even ranked third globally for on-time arrivals.
Out of its 1,712,529 flights, 83.46 percent arrived on-time, which is defined as a flight arriving within 15 minutes of the scheduled gate time.
United Airlines secured second place with 80.93 percent of its 1,615,085 flights arriving on time, and Alaska Airlines was third, with 79.25 percent of its 432,871 flights arriving on time.
At the lower end of the list were the only two Canadian airlines to make the top ten.
Frontier Airlines, based in Denver, ranked eighth with 71.57 percent of its 221,171 flights arriving on-time, while Air Canada managed a rate of 71.36 percent for its 385,703 flights.
In the final position, although it’s important to highlight that it still made the cut for the top 10 best North American airlines for punctuality, is WestJet from Calgary, Canada, with 70.99 percent of its 192,084 flights arriving on time.