![]() Of the over 5 million total flights in North America this year, 71.91% arrived on time. This is the second year in a row that Delta took the top spot as the most punctual carrier in Cirium's analysis.Īn on-time arrival includes any flight that lands at its destination and arrives at the gate within 15 minutes of the originally scheduled arrival time, a standard industry metric often referred to as "A15."Ĭirium's data set considers all flights completed in 2022, through Dec. 15, 84.1% of them arrived on time, according to the new data. The Atlanta-based carrier is poised to finish 2022 with an on-time arrival percentage of over 84%, according to new data released Thursday from Cirium, an aviation analytics company. Well-trained crews usually keep cabin announcements and other distractions to a minimum on very early flights, so it can be a lot easier to fall back asleep.If you're looking for the most on-time airline in the U.S., you might want to choose Delta Air Lines. Some airports have shorter security lines early in the morning (there are exceptions). Traffic can be much better when getting to the airport. But - based on my frequent travels - there are some other advantages to early flights that we haven’t yet accounted for. is only 2.5 minutes more delayed on average than one that leaves at 7 a.m. Perhaps these differences seem too small to be worth worrying about a flight scheduled to depart at 10 a.m. Security delays constitute just 0.1 percent of the total - they’re too negligible to plot on the chart, and don’t much affect the best timing for your flight. (These definitions are a little fuzzy: For instance, delays caused by moderately bad weather rather than severe weather are often classified as aviation system delays since they would theoretically be avoidable if the system was getting everything else right.)Ĭarrier delays are more or less constant throughout the day. (The combined number of arrivals plus departures is highest between 4 and 5 p.m.) Weather-related delays are highest between 3 and 11 p.m., when thunderstorms are more likely to form. Once they’re late, their schedule may be off for the rest of the day.Īviation system delays peak in the mid-to-late afternoon, when the transit system is at its fullest capacity. Early in the morning, almost all of them are in position from the previous evening. Ever have one of those days when you’re 10 minutes late to your first appointment and never make up the time? Airplanes are the same way. Late-arriving aircraft account for the bulk of the difference in the timing of delays. Here’s the share of delay minutes each type of delay was responsible for: ![]() What causes the accumulation of delays? The BTS data breaks delays down into five categories: aviation system delays, severe weather delays, late-arriving aircraft, security delays and carrier delays (such as those caused by mechanical or crew problems). Late flights represent only 2 percent of scheduled domestic departures. But it’s hard to find these, especially on the East Coast. Very late flights - those scheduled to leave at 10 p.m. They remain at 20-plus minutes through the 9 p.m. Delay times peak at 20.7 minutes - more than twice as long as for early-morning flights - in the block between 6 and 7 p.m. Through the rest of the morning and the afternoon, for every hour later you depart you can expect an extra minute of delays. Flights leaving before 6, or between 7 and 8, are nearly as good.īut delay times build from there. Flights scheduled to depart in that window arrived just 8.6 minutes late on average. The best time to fly is between 6 and 7 in the morning. Some versions of the BTS data assign a flight negative minutes if it arrives early I used a version where the minimum delay is 0 minutes instead. (A 20-minute delay is nothing compared to a whole afternoon spent in transit hell.) I counted diverted and cancelled flights as equivalent to 120-minute delays. Then I looked at how many minutes late the flights arrived on average.Ī few notes on this procedure: As should be clear, I prefer to look at delays in terms of time lost rather than a binary definition of arriving late or on time. I collected summary data for the more than 6 million flights in the database in 2013 and organized them in one-hour blocks by their scheduled hour of departure (for instance, 10:00 a.m. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics keeps on-time data on every domestic flight flown by the 14 largest U.S.-based airlines. But it’s the best time to fly if you want to minimize your time in the transit system. So the risk of human error may be higher early in the morning. Fortunately, I made it to the gate with a few minutes to spare and was allowed to board as a standby passenger. customs is on the Canadian side of the border. I’m not a morning person, and I forgot which airline I was flying.
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