Which airlines actually get you there on time in Europe? We ranked 28 major carriers on a full year of flights departing the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, measuring both how often they ran late and how late they ran.
Why this matters: the airline you book decides your odds of a ruined arrival more than almost anything else you control. For journalists, the gap between low-cost and network airlines, and between frequent and long delays, offers a sharper story than the usual on-time league table.
Key Takeaways
- Low-cost airlines arrived an hour or more late on 6.3% of flights, against 3.6% for network airlines. That is roughly 1.7 times as often.
- Network airlines cancelled about twice as often, so the "safer" choice depends on whether you fear a late arrival or no flight at all.
- Once a flight ran an hour late, the average delay across all airlines was 119 minutes, close to two hours.
The Most Delayed Major Airlines in Europe
We start with the simplest question: how often did a flight arrive 60 minutes or more behind schedule? This ranking covers airlines with at least 100,000 flight records departing Europe in the past 12 months.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights departing airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Leisure and low-cost airlines fill the top of the table. Jet2, easyJet and Ryanair each ran an hour or more late on around 7% to 8% of flights, about one flight in 13. Their business model, with quick turnarounds and aircraft flying many short sectors a day, leaves little slack: one late morning departure can follow the plane all the way into the evening.
The Most Punctual Major Airlines in Europe
At the other end of the table, every airline in the top ten kept 60+ minute delays below 4% of flights. Notice which kinds of airline make the list.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights departing airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Wideroe, Norway's regional airline, was the most punctual major carrier by a distance, followed by Spain's Binter, which flies mainly within the Canary Islands. Among the big network groups, Swiss, Lufthansa and SAS all stayed below 3%. Short regional networks away from Europe's most congested airspace appear to have a natural advantage.
What Independent Rankings Say
Cirium, the aviation data firm, publishes an annual on-time ranking based on flights arriving within 15 minutes of schedule. Its 2025 list for Europe is a useful cross-check on the figures above.
Source: Cirium, On-Time Performance Review 2025, published 2 January 2026.
The two rankings point in the same direction. SAS, Austrian, Iberia, Vueling and Finnair score well in both, while Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air are all missing from Cirium's European top ten. Spanish carriers do particularly well: Iberia Express topped the European list with almost 89% of flights on time. Globally, Cirium named Aeromexico the most punctual airline of 2025, at 90.0%.
Low-Cost vs Network Airlines: Two Different Risks
Grouping airlines by business model shows a trade-off that single rankings hide. Compare the delay bars with the cancellation bars.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights departing airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Low-cost carriers were late far more often, but network airlines cancelled flights at roughly twice the rate. One likely reason: network carriers can rebook passengers onto later flights through their hubs, which makes cancelling a late rotation an easier call, while a low-cost airline with no connecting network tends to fly its schedule late instead. For travellers, that means a low-cost booking carries more risk of a late arrival, while a network booking carries more risk of a rebooking.
How Long Delays Last When Flights Run Late
Frequency is only half the picture. This chart shows the average arrival delay of flights that were already 60 or more minutes late, for Europe's 14 largest airlines.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights to and from airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
The ranking almost flips. Aegean, Finnair and British Airways had the longest delays once things went wrong, each averaging more than two hours, while Ryanair's late flights averaged around 110 minutes. Route mix plays a part: on long-haul and hub-dependent flights, a technical problem or a missed slot can cost hours rather than minutes. A delay on these airlines is less likely, but more likely to be serious. Length matters for passengers' wallets too: under EU261, compensation starts once arrival is three hours late, and the reform deal agreed by EU institutions in June 2026 kept that three-hour threshold.
Delay Frequency vs Delay Length
Putting both measures on one chart separates airlines that are often a little late from those that are rarely late but badly so. Airlines towards the top right combine both problems.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights departing airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Most airlines cluster between 3% and 5% on frequency and between 100 and 125 minutes on length. Level stands out as the airline combining a high delay rate with long delays, while Wideroe and Binter sit in the most comfortable corner on both measures. Ryanair, easyJet and Jet2 sit far to the right but in the middle on length: frequent delays, typically shorter ones.
Minutes Lost per Flight: A Single Measure of Delay Pain
To combine frequency and length into one number, we divided the total delay minutes from 60+ minute delays by the number of flights each airline operated. Think of it as the expected cost of a serious delay on an average booking.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights to and from airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
easyJet and Ryanair lose the most time per flight to serious delays, at roughly 8 to 9 minutes for every flight they operate. British Airways comes next, driven more by the length of its delays than their frequency. At the bottom, Swiss and SAS lose under 4 minutes per flight, less than half the easyJet figure.
Airlines with the Highest Cancellation Rates
Delays get the headlines, but cancellations cause the most disruption. This ranking shows the share of scheduled flights that never departed.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights departing airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
KLM had the highest cancellation rate of any major airline, at almost one flight in 50, followed by Lufthansa and SAS. All three are network carriers with large hubs in northern Europe. Ryanair, by contrast, cancelled fewer than 3 flights in every 1,000. Jet2 is excluded here because almost no cancellations are recorded for it in the data.
The UK Picture: Official Punctuality Figures
The UK Civil Aviation Authority publishes punctuality data for every scheduled and charter flight at major UK airports. We analysed its 2025 figures to compare the airlines that fly most to and from the UK.
Source: AirAdvisor analysis of UK Civil Aviation Authority punctuality statistics, 2025, arrivals and departures combined.
The official UK data matches the pattern in AirAdvisor's database. TUI and Jet2, the two big holiday airlines, had the lowest on-time rates, with TUI flights running an average of 23 minutes late. British Airways did clearly better than Ryanair and easyJet at UK airports, with an average delay of 12 minutes against 16 and 15. Across all UK airports, 72.7% of flights were on time in 2025.
How Airline Delays Changed Month by Month
A yearly average can hide very different seasons. Follow the low-cost and network lines through the summer months.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights departing airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
January brought a sharp spike for Lufthansa, but summer is where these airlines really part ways. Ryanair and easyJet climbed past 10% of flights an hour late in July and August, while Lufthansa stayed below 5% throughout the summer. Lufthansa's spring looks almost perfect on delays, but the airline cancelled 7.2% of its flights in April, by far its worst month for cancellations.
Why Delays Spread: The Knock-On Effect
EUROCONTROL's Central Office for Delay Analysis breaks down the causes of every minute of delay across Europe. Its latest full-year report, for 2024, shows where the time goes.
Source: EUROCONTROL, All-causes delay to air transport in Europe, Annual 2024, published 25 July 2025.
The average departure in Europe left 17.5 minutes late in 2024, and almost half of that, 8 minutes, was knock-on delay: the aircraft simply arrived late from its previous flight. Airline-related causes added another 4.3 minutes, while air traffic control and airports together added about 4. A late start in the morning therefore shapes the rest of the day, which is exactly what the time-of-day figures below show.
When in the Day Delays Build Up
Delays snowball as aircraft fly their daily rotations. This chart shows when flights that ended up 60 or more minutes late were scheduled to depart.
Source: AirAdvisor's flight database, flights to and from airports in the EU, UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026.
Across all airlines, about 32% of serious delays hit flights scheduled in the evening. For Ryanair the figure is 46%, well above Lufthansa's 30%. This is the knock-on effect at work: an aircraft that falls behind in the morning rarely catches up. Delays pile up as the day goes on, which supports the familiar advice to choose an early departure when you can, especially on a low-cost airline.
References and Sources
- AirAdvisor's flight database, airline reports, data for 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026, accessed 5 November 2026.
- Cirium, On-Time Performance Review 2025, 2 January 2026: cirium.com
- EUROCONTROL, All-causes delay to air transport in Europe, Annual 2024, 25 July 2025: eurocontrol.int
- UK Civil Aviation Authority, UK flight punctuality statistics 2025: caa.co.uk
- European Parliamentary Research Service, air passenger rights revision, updated 30 June 2026: europarl.europa.eu
- Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council on air passenger rights: eur-lex.europa.eu
Methodology
All figures come from AirAdvisor's flight database, which merges schedule and status data from OAG and other providers. The period covers 12 full months, from 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2026. Rankings, cancellation rates and monthly trends cover flights departing airports in the 27 EU member states plus the UK, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. Average delay length, minutes lost per flight and time-of-day figures come from AirAdvisor's airline report for flights to or from the same countries. A flight counts as delayed when it reached the arrival gate 60 or more minutes after its scheduled time; delayed counts exclude cancelled flights.
The database stores one record per flight number, so codeshare flights appear under each airline that sells them. Rates for network airlines therefore partly reflect flights operated by their partners, and we report percentages rather than flight counts. Only airlines with at least 100,000 flight records were ranked. Airline groups combine their main operating units (Ryanair with Ryanair UK; Wizz Air with its Malta and UK units; Transavia France and Netherlands). The low-cost group covers Ryanair, easyJet, Wizz Air, Vueling, Transavia, Eurowings, Jet2, Volotea and Level; the network group covers the other 17 ranked airlines. Group figures are weighted by flight records. Jet2 is excluded from cancellation comparisons because the data records almost no cancellations for it. Minutes lost per flight equals total arrival delay of 60+ minute delays divided by all flights. External figures from Cirium, EUROCONTROL and the UK Civil Aviation Authority are quoted as published and use their own definitions: Cirium and the CAA count a flight as on time within 15 minutes of schedule, and EUROCONTROL's 2024 delay causes are the latest full-year breakdown available. UK airline figures are AirAdvisor's calculation from the CAA's 2025 dataset, combining arrivals and departures. Figures are rounded; all data is historical.
