Good News! The Most Punctual Airlines of 2019 are Even More On-Time than in 2018

Thomas Busson -

The flights of the top 10 most punctual airlines for the first half of 2019 arrived on-time more often than in 2018.

In other words, punctual airlines are getting even more so!

Let's take a look at these airline's on-time performance (the proportion of flights that arrived within 15 minutes of the scheduled time of arrival).

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

  1. Air Italy (IG) - OTP = 90.71%
  2. Royal Brunei Airlines (RBA BI) - OTP = 87.74%
  3. ANA All Nippon Airways (NH) - OTP = 87.34%
  4. Alitalia (AZ) - OTP = 87.02%
  5. LATAM (LAN LA) - OTP = 86.99%
  6. Iberia (IB) - OTP = 85.50%
  7. Japan Airlines JAL (JL) - OTP = 85.10%
  8. Malaysia Airlnes (MH) - OTP = 84.57%
  9. Singapore Airlines (SQ) - OTP = 84.30%
  10. SriLankan Airlines (UL) - OTP = 84.05%

Among them, only Japan Airlines (JL) saw their on-time performance (OTP) drop slightly.

The two most punctual global airlines, Air Italy and Royal Brunei Airlines, do not have historical flight data available for 2018. However, they are leading the way during the first semester of 2019!

It's also worth pointing out that out of the 10 most punctual airlines, 6 are from Asia.

(Check our Airline Ratings to get more info on each airline's flight and claim processing performance in 2018)

How Did They Perform Compared to 2018?

As mentioned above, we could not compare Air Italy and Royal Brunei Airlines' flight performance in 2019 with that of 2018 by lack of accessible data.

What about the rest of the top 10 most punctual global airlines?

ANA All Nippon Airways

All Nippon Airways (or ANA) was already the most punctual of those 10 airlines in 2018.

They managed to improve their on-time performance by 2.08 points, from 85.26% in 2018 to 87.34% during the first half of 2019.

The second quarter was even (slightly) better than the first one for the Japan air carrier, with an OTP of 87.62% (vs 87.06% for Q1).

Alitalia

87.02% of Alitalia's flights arrived on-time during the first semester of 2019.

That's a 3.54 points increase compared to 2018 - the 3rd biggest improvement of the 10 airlines.

Unlike All Nippon Airlines, Alitalia achieved a better on-time performance during the first quarter of 2019, with an impressive 89.49% of on-time flights, versus "only" 84.54% during Q2.

LATAM

LATAM is the airline that made the 2nd most progress compared to 2018, with a 7.39% increase in on-time performance.

86.99% of LATAM's flights arrived on time in 2019, while this proportion was only 79.60% in 2018.

Perhaps even more impressive yet, the second Q2 of LATAM was examplary in terms of punctuality, especially for an airline of this size, which operates over 38K flights per month on average: between April and June 2019, 90.41% of their flights were on-time.

Iberia

Iberia also made good progress since last year, with less than 15% of their flights being delayed in 2019.

Their OTP for the first half of 2019 reached 85.50%, a 3.33 points increase.

Japan Airlines

As mentioned above, Japan Airlines is the only air carrier among the top 10 which on-time performance got (very slightly) worse in 2019.

Both quarter of 2019 are very comparable for the Japanese airline - only during the month of March did the airline record an unusually higher proportion of delayed flights (18.69%), which explains this slight drop in OTP.

Malaysia Airlnes

Malaysia is the airline of this top 10 most punctual airlines of 2019 which recorded the most progression, with an impressive +12.22 points in on-time performance.

This is particularly important for the Asian airline, since it puts them in a position of role model for other airlines (in terms of flight performance - certainly not when it comes to processing compensation claims), after being below the industry average last year.

Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines, which regularly pops up among the best airlines in the world (except in our previous ranking), managed to reduce their proportion of delayed flights in 2019.

This is mainly due to a great performance during the first quarter of 2019, with 87.56% of their flights arrived on-time between January and March.

SriLankan Airlines

SriLankan Airlines is the last airline of our top 10 for the first semester of 2019. During this period, less than 16% of their flights were delayed by 15 minutes or more.

That's a +3.40 points increase compared to 2018. While the airline accomplished better results during both quarters of 2019, the progress made during Q2 is the most significant, with an on-time performance of 86.13%.

Have you Ever Had a Delayed Flight with These Airlines?

You can get up to 600€ in compensation if your flight with these airlines was delayed by 3 hours or more.

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

Data source: Flightstats.com