Even More Delays in 2019 from the Least Punctual Global Airlines

The flights of the top 10 least punctual global airlines for the first half of 2019 arrived late more often than in 2018.

What does it mean?

Non-punctual airlines got even more so!

Let's take a look at their on-time performance for 2019 and how it compares to 2018.

If your flight was delayed by at least 3 hours, you can get between 250 and 600€ in compensation from the airline. Fill out your flight details here and find out if you're eligible - it takes less than 3 minutes!

What are the Least Punctual Airlines in 2019 (so far)?

Egyptair (MS) - OTP = 58.93%
Saudi Arabian Airlines (SV) - OTP = 60.98%
Aigle Azur (ZI) - OTP = 64.44%
Air Canada Rouge (ROU) - OTP = 65.67%
EVA Air (BR) - OTP = 65.74%
TUI Airways/Thomson (BY/TOM) - OTP = 65.80%
Thomas Cook Airlines (MT) - OTP = 66.83%
El Al (LY) - OTP = 67.57%
Air Canada (AC) - OTP = 68.03%
TAP Portugal (TP) - OTP = 69.20%

What does OTP mean?

It stands for "on-time performance" and represents the portion of an airline's flights that arrives no more than 15 minutes later the scheduled time of arrival.

To take an example, 68.03% of Air Canada's flights arrived on time during the first half of 2019. This means that 31.97% of the Canadian airline's flights were late by more than 15 minutes.

How Did the Least Punctual Airlines of 2019 Performed Compared to 2018?

TAP Portugal

Let's put it this way:

Among the least punctual airlines of this first half of 2019, TAP Portugal is the best one - although "least worst" seems more appropriate in this context. The Portuguese air carrier is among the only 2 of this top 10 that managed to improve their flight performance compared to last year.

With an on-time performance (OTP) that went from 61.71% in 2018 to 69.20% for the first semester this year, they accomplished the most progress of this top 10 (+7.49 points).

To put things into perspective, this is still (very) far from a good performance. But it's going the right way, at least.

Indeed, TAP Portugal was flirting with the very bottom of our airline rating for their terrible flight performance (only Tunisair did worst) and poor claim processing score last year.

Air Canada

Air Canada, on the contrary, seems determined to stick to the bottom of the ranking of the worst airlines.

While the largest Canadian airline does a good job of processing compensation claims for their delayed and cancelled flight,

The OTP of Air Canada dropped slightly since last year, reaching 68.03% only for 2019 so far.

El Al

El Al is another example that the least punctual airlines are getting even less so in 2019.

While less than 30% of their flights were delayed in 2018, that proportion has increased to 32.43% for this first semester of 2019.

With an OTP of 67.57% for this period, El Al loses 2.63 points compared to last year.

Thomas Cook Airlines

Thomas Cook Airlines is the second of the two airlines (along with TAP Portugal) that managed to improve their on-time performance in 2019. While the progress isn't as marked as that of the Portuguese airline, this increase of 2.50 points remains a good achievement.

"Only" 33.17% of Thomas Cook Airlines arrived late by 15 minutes or more during the first semester of 2019.

A performance far from brilliant, once again, but which is still an improvement for the British airline.

TUI Airways

TUI Airways (previously Thomson) is another example of the degrading flight performance of the already-bad-performing airlines.

From 67.35% in 2018, their OTP further dropped to 65.80% in 2019.

EVA Air

No historical data is available for EVA Air regarding their flight performance in 2018. As such, no comparison is possible with their results in this first half of 2019.

With an OTP of 65.74%, it seems that EVA Air is entering the rankings from the bottom.

Air Canada Rouge

Just like its mother company, Air Canada Rouge is going further down in the red in 2019.

Their on-time performance lost 2.34 points since last year, reaching 65.67% for the first half of the year.

Aigle Azur

Aigle Azur is the airline of this Top 10 worst airlines of 2019 which performance remains the most stable compared to last year.

It's a shame that the French airline's OTP is stabilizing at such a low level, however.

35.56% of their flight was delayed by at least 15 minutes in the first half of 2019 - a 0.28 points-increase.

Saudi Arabian Airlines

Saudi Arabian Airlines is second-to-last of this ranking, but in a way, it's the worst student of the lot.

Last year, they accomplished a performance that was below average, yes, but still far from as bad as the first semester of 2019. In 2018, less than 29% of their flights arrived late.

In 2019, this proportion has skyrocketed to close to 40%. That's an increase of 10.38 points, the worst evolution of all 74 airlines we studied.

Egyptair

Compared to that of Saudia, the drop of 5.31 points in on-time performance recorded by Egyptair almost seems okay. It's not.

The Egyptian airline has the honor of being awarded the title of "Least Punctual Airline of 2019" (so far), with a mediocre OTP of 58.93%.

Passengers on an Egyptair flights have close to 1 chance out of 2 of getting late to their destination (!).

Claim Compensation for Your Delayed Flight

If your flight has been delayed by at least 3 hours, you may be entitled to up to 600€ in compensation from the airline.

Check if you're eligible by filling out your flight information here.

You can also calculate how much you're entitled to with the help of this post, while this one has everything you need to know to claim a flight compensation.

Data source: Flightstats.com