Carriers’ February On-Time Performance Again Improves

February’s on-time performance for North American carriers continued to improve after December’s tumble.

Average North American airline on-time performance in February was 75 percent, up from 72.2 percent in January and 65.8 percent in December, according to Cirium’s monthly report. As in January, each of the carriers included showed month-over-month improvement.

The top four performers surpassed 80 percent, with Delta Air Lines on top again with 84.8 percent of flights arriving on time. Southwest Airlines was second at 82.4 percent, a marked improvement over December’s 69.4 percent performance and more than 2 percentage points higher than its November score. American Airlines was third at 81.6 percent. 

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Delta again was the only North American carrier to make the February list of top global on-time performance, at sixth. The global on-time average was 85.7 percent.

Cirium changed its methodology beginning with the January 2023 report and now combines mainline and network flights into one performance percentage for all flights operated under a carrier’s brand, including flights operated by a separate airline partner but excluding codeshares. Cirium previously separated the two.

The updated report also now shows the number of flights canceled during the month as well as completion factors. 

The number of North American flights canceled during February declined nearly 29 percent to 9,636 from 13,543 in January. Southwest led North American carriers with a completion factor of 99 percent, followed by United Airlines at 98.6 percent and Delta at 98.3 percent. 

A flight is considered on time if the aircraft arrives at the gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival time.

RELATED: Carriers’ January On-Time Performance Improves