An annual ranking published Thursday showed that Mexican airline Aeromexico had the highest on-time arrival performance in the world in 2024. Despite a July computer breakdown that resulted in thousands of aircraft cancellations, Delta Air Lines received the top rating among US carriers.
Nearly 87% of Aeromexico planes arrived within 15 minutes of their planned arrival, according to a survey by aviation data supplier Cirium. This is a commonly used metric to assess an airline’s on-time performance.
With an on-time performance rate of slightly over 86%, Saudia, the flag carrier of Saudi Arabia, came in second place globally, according to Cirium.
For 16 years, Cirium has assigned timeliness ratings to airlines. According to CEO Jeremy Bowen, the summer technological failure and extreme weather patterns made 2024 a challenging year for airlines. According to Bowen, the winning airlines should be commended for delivering the majority of passengers to their destinations on schedule.
Located in AtlantaWith an on-time rate of over 83%, Delta was able to secure third place globally. According to Cirium, United Airlines (almost 81%) and Alaska Airlines (just over 79%) were the next-best U.S. airlines.
With on-time rates below 72%, budget airlines Frontier, Air Canada, and WestJet from Canada finished last among U.S. and Canadian carriers.
Japan Airlines, low-cost Spanish carrier Iberia Express, Panama’s Copa Airlines, and South African low-cost carrier FlySafair were among the other regional winners worldwide, according to Cirium.
According to Cirium, King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, was the top airport for on-time departures in 2024. According to Cirium, about 87% of planes from that location departed within 15 minutes of their stated departure time.
The next-best departure records, at almost 84%, were at Benito Jurez International Airport in Mexico City and Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru.
Despite July’s difficulties from an outage following a flawed update that cybersecurity contractor CrowdStrike distributed to Microsoft systems worldwide, Delta managed to take the top rank among U.S. airlines.
Alleging that the downtime cost the airline $500 million, Delta filed a lawsuit against CrowdStrike. In part, CrowdStrike has defended themselves by claiming that other airlines recovered from the disruption considerably faster.
The Associated Press
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