News

UK airlines fail to make top 10 for European punctuality

No UK airline featured in the top 10 of most punctual European carriers in August, new data reveals.

SAS was the best performer in the peak summer month with 83.53% of flights arriving on time, followed closely by Iberia Express.

Icelandair, Vueling and Norwegian also made the top five, offering a punctual service on more than 78.56% of flights.

Then came Air Europa, Iberia, KLM, Finnair and Norwegian Air Sweden.

Aviation analytics firm Cirium, which compiled the data, found that the number of cancelled flights within Europe for August dropped by more than a third (36.76%) following the Crowdstrike IT outage the previous month.

Almost 7,000 European flights were cancelled last month out of a total of 119,742 against 10,976 cancellations in July.

The Asia-Pacific region saw 23,063 cancellations, the largest number globally, despite a 15% decline on July’s figure when the Crowdstrike IT meltdown occurred.

Aeromexico was ranked as the most punctual airline worldwide with an on-time performance up almost five points month-on-month to 86.54%.

Saudia was second place followed by South American carriers Avianca, Azul and Latam Airlines.

Delta Air Lines reclaimed the top spot in North America as carriers recovered from the July 19 Crowdstrike outage. United was second followed by Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines and American Airlines.

Cirium said: “The month of August saw encouraging developments, including a decrease in the number of regional flight cancellations and improvement in the overall performance of airports and airlines. 

“Flight cancellations decreased by 5-37% in the Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Middle East & Africa regions; although there was a slight increased of 6% in Latin America.”

Share article

View Comments

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.