The World’s Most Punctual Airlines

Before you book your next flight, read this.

The World’s Most Punctual Airlines

You slam your suitcase, battle traffic, rush to check-in and… wait 45 minutes to be processed. Finally, you make your way to Departures where you spend two hours buying things you don’t need. Then, just as you reach peak boredom, the announcement comes – your flight has been delayed.

Well isn’t that fantastic?

While there’s nothing you can do to guarantee a timely flight, you can research which airlines (and routes) have a tendency for tardiness and avoid them like you do a budget airline’s shrimp cocktails. Enter: this year’s aviation punctuality reports, two of which have recently been released.

The first of which was published by data analyst OAG, in the form of a soccer-like table – the Punctuality League 2020 – which features a winner for this year’s most punctual airline almost as unexpected as when Leicester won the Premier League in 2015.

Here are OAG’s most punctual airlines for 2020 (based on data gathered throughout 2019).

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Indonesian airline Garuda comes in at number one, with a 95% percentage of on-time flights – something most people who have ever travelled around Indonesia, or experienced the concept of ‘Bali time’ might raise an eyebrow at.

As one commenter in Points Finder’s Instagram post of the table points out, “not so hard to be punctual when you don’t operate so many flights like the big guys.”

Copa Airlines, Skymark Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, LATAM Airlines Group and Aeroflot came in next (in positions 2 through to 6, respectively), while All Nippon Airways, Jetstar Asia, Singapore Airlines and Thai Air Asia came in at positions 7 to 10 respectively.

This came after Cirium, another aviation analyst, released its own findings a day earlier, naming its top three on-time global mainline airlines as Aeroflot (number 1, with 86.68% of flights on time), All Nippon Airways (number 2, with 86.26% flights on time) and Delta Air Lines (number 3, with 85.69% of flights on time).

Cirium also named LATAM airlines the most on-time global network airline, with an on-time percentage of 86.67% and the most on-time low-cost carrier as StarFlyer, with an on-time percentage of 91.37%.

The two analysts also released lists of the most on-time airports, for anyone weighing up which hub to go through.

OAG’s Most Punctual Airports, by on-time percentage

  • Top Small Airport: Minsk (92.6%)
  • Top Medium Airport: Panama City (92.21%)
  • Top Large Airport: Osaka Itami (88.03%)
  • Top Major Airport: Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen (83.42%)
  • Top Mega Airport: Moscow Sheremetyevo (86.87%)

Cirium’s most punctual airports, by on-time percentage

  • Top Large Airport: Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport (95.01%)
  • Top Medium Airport: Taiwan’s Kaohsiung International Airport (93.32%)
  • Top Small Airport: Koh Samui Airport (95.08%)

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