Southwest Airlines as the most on-time carrier in February according to data from aviation analytics company Cirium. Spirit was number two, and Delta was number three – in fact Delta barely edged out United.
What’s also amazing looking at results for North America airlines is how month after month Air Canada is so bad. Among U.S. carriers, JetBlue is consistently at the bottom and it’s of course not a surprise to see that when Frontier passengers fail to pay on-time fees the airline doesn’t provide that free.
Cirium provides a nice usual visual plotting on-time performance against scale of operations. Southwest looks even more impressive given their scale (you might expect a smaller operation like Spirit’s to be able to perform well, but doing it with over 100,000 flights is hard!). Still, it’s amazing how Spirit – for all of its problems – turned itself around into a reliable carrier.
There’s more detail on the top five carriers. Southwest not only was most on-time they also completed 99.56% of their flights. Delta cancelled a higher percentage of flights than Southwest and Spirit, and American, which faced weather issues, cancelled an unusually high percentage of flights.
On-time arrivals, ultimately more important than just pushing back on-time, are also shown.
Spirit Airlines
Southwest’s performance here is even more impressive when you consider that they generally schedule less time on the ground between flights than other airlines, assisted by passengers who line up early for boarding and get on board quickly hunting for seats. Though the airline thinks they can actually reduce turn times by going more electronic, assigned seats next year might cut against this.
Finally, looking at on-time performance the past three months shows that this is not an anomaly. Southwest’s February performance marked a recent average not an outlier. Spirit, too, was ahead of Delta last month as well.
Southwest and Spirit have both been performing well, and Delta has been … ok, but far from their historic dominance.
We’ll see what March brings, of course, since on-time operations and reliability can be influenced by things like weather and air traffic control, where issues may be highly localized to geography where a given airline operates. Nonetheless, Southwest and Spirit have both been operating well – and it isn’t just a single month fluke.
I don’t fly LCCs so I read that as Delta most reliable carrier I would actually fly.
The top performers in these categories are all dependent on weather and their routes so my take is the top 4 are the best to fly. the most appreciable thing in this data is how bad American is
Interesting about Air Canada. If eligible for compensation under APPR, these delays may be quite costly to the airline. Then again, it could just be winter weather, so perhaps not.
@Raphael — Good point. Like, Gary’s title is misleading (bad connotation for Delta, ‘dethroned’) but in reality, as you suggest, it’s the most reliable that many of us actually fly (better than AA, UA, B6). So, don’t worry, @Tim Dunn, Delta’s still top dog, relative to its primary competitors.
this is all that needs to be said.
“on-time operations and reliability can be influenced by things like weather and air traffic control”
life is a marathon and not a sprint. It isn’t a surprise that airlines w/ large operations in the northern tier of states suffer in the winter.
Cirium data is not official DOT data. through Nov 2024 – which is as far as DOT as released, DL is the best continental US carrier on a year to date basis.
It is what happens on a long term basis.
@ Tim — No, what needs to be said is that you don’t have to be ripped off by Delta & Co. to have a great flight experience, like those brought to you by NK.
ATL had severe weather last month. On time/delay stats are meaningless when taken without the impact of weather. There’s nothing an airline can do when ATC puts holds on traffic or airports have delays. What would be more important would be recovery, which would be difficult to measure. But I’d bet money Delta is far better at recovery than Spirit.
Simple question:
Is this data for 1 month or 3?
According to this delta is still the #1 airline of “US Global Carriers” or however they spin it
Southwest is under the influence of Elliot. The stats will be interesting as they go forward over the next year.
Gary Leff writes, “Southwest and Spirit Have Officially Dethroned Delta as America’s Most Reliable Airlines.” Sophisticated and refined gate thugs who desire reliable airlines to get to their weekend Florida airport gate smackdown on time are another reason premium passengers have started to avoid flying with Delta Air Lines.
@Ken A so don’t fly Delta. It’s consumers choice. Personally, I would rather deal with your so called “thugs” then to ever buy a ticket on Spirit