The past year has been absolutely hectic for travelling, but especially for the aviation industry. Over the course of the pandemic, travel restrictions were lifted a few times only to be put back in place soon after, so when they were finally lifted mostly for good in 2022, airlines and airports were left unprepared.
Airlines were short staffed after not having enough time to re-hire personnel, while the workers they still had were overworked and underpaid which led to a series of strikes. Additionally, airports also struggled to manage the influx of passengers, leading to even more delays and cancellations.
Amid all this turmoil some airlines still managed to keep a somewhat stable schedule and Cirium, an aviation analytics company, revealed which ones were the most punctual. Their On-Time Performance Review 2022 analysed over 600 sources of real-time flight-information, including airlines, airports, global distribution systems, positional data, civil aviation authorities, air navigation service providers, proprietary data partnerships and the internet, evaluated by an independent board of advisors, comprised of industry experts with an unbiased view of the aviation sector.
Ramping back up operations so quickly after an enforced slowdown is not easy to do and the top-ranked airlines and airports in Cirium’s 2022 On-Time Performance Review deserve their recognition for this well-orchestrated achievement.
Jeremy Bowen, Cirium CEO
For a flight to be considered on time, it has to land within 15 minutes of its scheduled gate arrival and Azul Airlines managed to do that for 88.93% of the 279,722 flights it had in 2022, according to Cirium’s data, being the world’s leading airline on punctuality.
The 15-minute rule was also applied to airports, the performance of which was measured by the number of lights departing withing 15 minutes of the scheduled time. With a 90.33% on time departure rate out of 373,264 flights, Haneda Airport was named the world’s best performing in 2022.
Breaking down the ranking into geographical blocs, in North America, Delta Air Lines was the most punctual airline in 2022, ranking 5th worldwide. In Europe, Iberia took first place, although it did not qualify among the top 10 performers in the world. Azul was also the top performer airline in Latin America, however, for Asia Pacific, the top airline was Thai AirAsia, which is not among the first 10 worldwide, but the region’s second, ANA, also took second place in the global ranking. The situation for the Middle East and Africa is similar, where the region’s most punctual airline, Oman Air, did not make it among the world’s best performers, but Emirates and Qatar, which are further down the list, feature in the 7th and respectively 9th place in the global ranking.
Lastly, Cirium found the most punctual low-cost airline in 2022 was StarFkyer, being on time for 95.23% of its 21,894 flights.
