3,600 late flights for Canadian airline in May, but it’s still among best in North America

When it comes to landing flights on time, May numbers from North America’s 10 major airlines offer both good news and not-so-good news for Canada’s second-largest carrier.

Calgary-based WestJet, which operates many of its flights out of Pearson Airport in Mississauga, once again made the top three as measured by aviation data firm Cirium’s latest monthly On-time Performance Report that tracks the reliability of North America’s major airlines (see charts below).

That’s the good news for WestJet, which finished in second place in April after two consecutive dead-last months (February, March) of operating more late flights than any other major airline in North America.

The not-so-outstanding news for the Canadian airline is that its 77.55 per cent on-time arrival rate in May (16,348 total flights), which was good enough for third-best on the list, was a drop-off from its 82.70 per cent on-time mark in April (15,085 flights). It should be noted that all 10 airlines experienced drop-offs, some greater than and others less than that of WestJet.

“WestJet continued to maintain its newfound footing and came in third place,” authors of the report stated in a synopsis of the North American flight rankings. The report also made note of WestJet’s five percentage point drop month-to-month.

Of WestJet’s improved showing in April, the report’s authors described it at the time as “a remarkable 18-point improvement (that) propelled WestJet from 10th place” in March to second place in April.

The May numbers for WestJet (77.55 per cent on-time rate) mean just over 22 per cent of the carrier’s flights (about 3,597) were late arrivals at their destination, meaning 15 minutes or more past scheduled arrival time. The number of late flights in April, by comparison, was 2,564 and in March WestJet landed about 5,552 late flights.

WestJet’s performance last month trailed only U.S.-based Delta Air Lines (81.04 per cent of 147,234 flights were on time) and Alaska Airlines (79.04 per cent of 37,224 flights).

Delta placed first for the ninth consecutive month.

Rounding out the top five airlines for on-time performance in May were Long Island-based JetBlue (76.58 per cent of 27,853 flights) and United Airlines (75.95 per cent of 136,148 flights).

Air Canada improves its on-time mark

Meanwhile, Canada’s largest airline moved up the rankings from ninth place in April to sixth spot in May. Air Canada, which consistently found itself at or near the bottom of the OTP rankings throughout 2023, landed 74.05 per cent of its 33,070 May flights on time. In April, those numbers were 75.22 per cent of 30,913 flights.

Numbers measuring on-time performance for all of 2023 placed Air Canada at the bottom of the rankings for the entire 12-month period, Cirium data revealed earlier.

Meanwhile, Denver-based Frontier Airlines was 10th on the latest list for the second consecutive month, landing 66.47 per cent of its 20,173 flights on time.

Each month, Cirium ranks the 10 largest airlines in a given region around the world based on their on-time performance rate.

Its numbers from May show of the 758,039 flights across North America (10 airlines combined), 74.43 per cent arrived on time. That’s down from the 79.72 per cent mark in April (724,130 flights).

Airlines’ on-time performance for December 2023, February 2024, March 2024, April 2024 and May 2024 appear above. Numbers for January 2024 were not made available. (Source: Cirium Aviation Analytics)

(Cover photo: WestJet X)