This Airline Had the Most On-Time Flights This Year

After the year-end winter mess that resulted in canceled flights, mountains of lost baggage and numerous negative headlines for Southwest, some airlines can celebrate December knowing they had a decent amount of on-time flights this year. Cirium, an aviation analytics company, just released its On-Time Performance Review for 2022, an annual report that ranks North American airlines on their punctuality. The company tracked 99% of flights up to December 15 to calculate the findings in its report.

So who came out on top? Delta took the number one spot, with 84% of its flights arriving on time in 2022. According to a news release, an “on-time” flight arrives within 15 minutes of the scheduled gate arrival.

If you spent any time waiting for your flight to take off this year, you might be surprised to hear that of the five million flights that Cirium tracked this year, nearly 72% arrived on time. We think that’s a pretty decent number, especially after airlines scrambled to ramp up their operations following COVID travel restrictions.

Here’s how the other North American airlines ranked in the report:

Alaska Airlines: 81%

United Airlines: 81%

American Airlines: 79%

Southwest Airlines: 75%

Frontier Airlines: 69%

JetBlue Airways: 67%

Allegiant Air: 66%

WestJet: 60%

Air Canada: 55%

It’s interesting that two Canadian airlines came in last place, as we often think that our neighbors up north do things better than us. But it’s good to know that after the swirl of 2022 holiday travel, a few U.S. airlines have something to be proud of going into 2023.