Dive Brief:
- Delta Air Lines remained the most on-time North American carrier for the fourth consecutive year, getting customers to their intended destinations within 15 minutes of scheduled arrival at a higher rate than any other North American airlines, according to a Cirium report released Thursday.
- North American airlines improved on their on-time arrival rate, from 74% in 2023 to 76% in 2024, despite challenges outside their control, including a shortage of air traffic controllers and large-scale IT outages.
- Southwest Airlines had the highest completion rate among North American carriers, with 99.4% of flights not canceled, according to the report.
Dive Insight:
Airlines faced a slew of challenges in 2024. Despite hiccups, airlines delivered more passengers to their intended destinations on-time — an important metric for airline customer experience.
Cirium credited factors within Delta's control — its employee training programs, performance-aligned incentives and prioritization of safety and punctuality for its on-time record — for its success.
Though Delta took longer to recover from the CrowdStrike outage than other carriers, it outperformed other North American airlines by significant margins for 51 weeks. Its on-time rate was 83% for over 1.7 million flights.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian highlighted its operational and customer experience excellence during an October earnings call.
“Year to date, our on-time performance is best in the industry, and our completion factor leads the network carriers even when including the impact of the outage,” Bastian said.
United Airlines and Alaska Airlines came in second and third for on-time arrivals.
Cirium analyzed real-time flight information of millions of flights from airports, airlines, global distribution systems and civil aviation authorities to determine rankings for on-time flights.
