Global Flight Cancellation Statistics: Insights for 2026
Airlines cancelled about 1.15 million flights worldwide in 2025, according to Cirium. In the United States, 2026 is running well ahead of 2025: 2.31% of domestic flights were cancelled from January to July, against 1.72% a year earlier.
Why this matters: a delay costs you time, but a cancellation takes away the seat you paid for. It is also the disruption that triggers the clearest legal rights, from an automatic refund in the US to up to 600 EUR in compensation under EU261. This page covers cancellations only, by region, cause, airline, airport and event. For delays and punctuality, see our global flight disruption statistics.
Key Flight Cancellation Statistics at a Glance
- Cirium's five regional totals add up to 1,147,661 cancelled flights in 2025, and Cirium reports a 12% fall on 2024.
Source: Cirium On-Time Performance Review, 2025 - Asia-Pacific had the highest cancellation rate of any region at 2.22%, with 560,899 flights cancelled.
Source: Cirium On-Time Performance Review, 2025 - Cancellations rose 15% in the Middle East and Africa and 11% in North America in 2025, while Latin America cut them by 32%.
Source: Cirium On-Time Performance Review, 2025 - US airlines cancelled 118,168 domestic flights in 2025, a rate of 1.53%.
Source: BTS Airline On-Time Statistics, 2025 - Weather caused 61.6% of cancellations on flights run by US reporting carriers in 2025, and airline-controlled problems caused 20.5%.
Source: BTS Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance data, 2025 - US airlines cancelled 2.31% of domestic flights from January to July 2026, against 1.72% in the same months of 2025.
Source: BTS Airline On-Time Statistics, 2026 - 8,681 US flights were cancelled on 25 January 2026, 46.5% of the day's schedule and the most on any single day since 31 March 2020.
Source: BTS Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance data, 2026 - PSA Airlines had the highest cancellation rate of any US reporting carrier in 2025 at 4.58%; Allegiant had the lowest at 0.47%.
Source: BTS Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance data, 2025 - FAA-ordered flight cuts during the November 2025 government shutdown coincided with 9,673 US cancellations between 7 and 17 November.
Source: BTS data and FAA Emergency Order, 2025 - Europe's operational cancellation rate was 1.7% in 2019 and 2.3% in 2022, the latest year Eurocontrol publishes.
Source: Eurocontrol Standard Inputs for Economic Analyses, 2026 - 1.04% of planned flights at the 25 reporting UK airports were cancelled in 2025, with Teesside the highest at 3.85%.
Source: UK CAA Punctuality Statistics, 2025 - The French air traffic control strike of 3 and 4 July 2025 caused 1,422 cancellations per day, 4.7% of all scheduled European flights.
Source: Eurocontrol strike impact assessment, 2025 - Only 373 flights operated between Europe and the Middle East on 1 March 2026, 80% below the usual 2,000 a day.
Source: Eurocontrol European Aviation Trends, 2026 - IndiGo cancelled 2,507 flights between 3 and 5 December 2025, stranding more than 300,000 passengers.
Source: Ministry of Civil Aviation (India), 2026 - EU261 pays 250 to 600 EUR for a cancellation unless the airline gave at least 14 days' notice, offered a qualifying reroute or proves extraordinary circumstances.
Source: Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 - US airlines must refund cancelled flights automatically within 7 business days for card payments if you decline the alternative offered.
Source: US DOT final rule, April 2024
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Flight Cancellation Rates Around the World in 2025
Cirium, the aviation data company, tracked about 74.3 million flights across five regions in 2025 and found 1.54% of them cancelled. The global total fell 12%, but the regions did not move together. The chart shows how each region's cancellations changed against 2024.
Source: Cirium, On-Time Performance Review 2025, January 2026 (Cancellation Report, January to December 2025). Percentage changes as published by Cirium.
Latin America made the biggest improvement, cutting cancellations by 32% to 71,301. Asia-Pacific fell 22% to 560,899 but still had the highest cancellation rate at 2.22%, followed by North America at 1.43%, Latin America at 1.21%, the Middle East and Africa at 1.02% and Europe at 0.98%. The two regions that went backwards were North America, up 11% to 286,952 cancellations, and the Middle East and Africa, up 15% to 57,506.
US Flight Cancellations by Year and Cause
The US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) records every domestic flight run by its reporting carriers, and airlines must give a cause code for each cancellation. Counting flights rather than percentages shows how much the total swings from year to year, and which cause drives the swing. This breakdown counts only the flights that reporting carriers operate themselves, so its 2025 total (102,876) is lower than the 118,168 in BTS's published all-carrier tables, which also include non-reporting airlines, mostly regional partners flying under the big airlines' brands.
Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present), TranStats, data January 2019 to July 2026, accessed 24 September 2026. AirAdvisor aggregation of flight-level records. 2020 and 2021 omitted (pandemic schedules). Jan-Jul 2026 is year to date.
Weather is the dominant cause in every year shown. In 2025 it accounted for 63,404 of 102,876 cancellations (61.6%), with airline-controlled causes at 21,073 (20.5%), the air traffic system at 18,349 (17.8%) and security at just 50. Airline-caused cancellations have fallen sharply since 2022, when they reached 71,780, or 39.6% of the total. The first seven months of 2026 have already produced 64,257 weather cancellations, more than all of 2025.
BTS uses four cancellation codes. Carrier covers problems within the airline's control, such as crew and maintenance issues, aircraft cleaning, baggage loading and fuelling. Weather means extreme weather that stops a flight. National Aviation System (NAS) covers air traffic control, airport operations, heavy traffic and non-extreme weather. Security covers evacuations, security breaches and screening problems.
US Cancellations in 2026 Are Running Well Ahead of 2025
Monthly rates show when the damage happens. Winter storms and summer thunderstorms create sharp peaks, and quiet months such as September and October sit close to 0.5%.
Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present), TranStats, January 2025 to July 2026 (latest month published), accessed 24 September 2026. AirAdvisor aggregation of flights operated by reporting carriers; BTS's published all-carrier rate for January to July 2026 is 2.31%.
January 2026 was the worst month on the chart, with 25,635 cancellations and a 4.71% rate, the highest monthly rate since December 2022, driven by the late-January winter storm. January 2025 (3.02%) and November 2025 (2.49%) were the other big spikes. From January to July, BTS's published rate reached 2.31% in 2026 against 1.72% in 2025, and on the chart March 2026 (2.90%) and July 2026 (2.62%) were both worse than any month of 2025 except January. Summer peaks and the busiest travel weeks are covered in our peak travel season delay statistics.
The Worst Days for US Flight Cancellations Since 2025
Most cancellations cluster on a handful of days. The chart ranks the ten days with the most cancelled domestic flights between 1 January 2025 and 31 July 2026.
Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present), TranStats, daily totals 1 January 2025 to 31 July 2026 (AirAdvisor aggregation by flight date).
25 January 2026 stands alone: 8,681 cancellations, or 46.5% of the day's 18,675 scheduled flights. No day since 31 March 2020 has seen more. Four of the ten worst days fall inside the same storm (24 to 27 January 2026), which cancelled 19,075 flights in total. The Northeast blizzard of 22 to 24 February 2026 and the storm of 15 and 16 March 2026 fill most of the remaining places. 9 November 2025 is the only day in the ten where weather was not the main cause: FAA-ordered capacity cuts during the government shutdown produced 2,480 cancellations, 1,555 of them coded to the air traffic system.
Which US Airlines Cancel the Most Flights?
BTS publishes cancellation data for every carrier above its reporting threshold: 14 airlines in 2025 and 13 in 2026. The chart includes all of them and compares the same seven months of each year, so winter storms weigh equally on both. Regional airlines such as PSA Airlines, Republic Airways, Envoy Air and SkyWest fly under the brands of larger partners, so your ticket may say American, Delta or United even when one of them operates the flight.
Source: US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present), TranStats, January to July 2025 and 2026, by reporting (operating) carrier. Hawaiian reported separately in 2025 and within Alaska from January 2026. Spirit ceased operations on 2 May 2026; its 2026 figure covers January to 2 May.
Spirit cancelled 7.47% of its flights in 2026 before it stopped flying, five times its rate a year earlier. PSA Airlines (5.77%) and Republic Airways (5.13%) follow, and JetBlue more than doubled its rate to 3.99%, the highest of any mainline airline still flying, ahead of American at 2.84%. Delta's rate also doubled, from 1.05% to 2.14%. Ten of the 13 carriers reporting in both periods cancelled a larger share of flights in 2026; the exceptions were PSA Airlines, Envoy Air and Alaska. Over the full year 2025, PSA Airlines had the highest rate at 4.58%, followed by Republic Airways (3.26%) and Envoy Air (2.24%), while Allegiant had the lowest at 0.47%, ahead of United (0.82%) and Hawaiian (0.82%). For airline size and market share, see our largest airlines in North America.
By airport, Washington Reagan National (DCA) had the highest cancellation rate in 2025 among US airports with at least 20,000 reporting-carrier departures, at 3.86%, followed by New York LaGuardia (3.04%), Dallas/Fort Worth (2.76%) and Newark (2.52%).
Flight Cancellation Rates in Europe
Eurocontrol, which manages the European air traffic network, measures "operational" cancellations: flights confirmed by the airline the day before, or listed in the airport's schedule, that never took off or landed. Its most recent series, republished in August 2026, ends in 2022.
Source: Eurocontrol, Standard Inputs for Economic Analyses, Release 10.0.2, August 2026, chapter 15 "Operational cancellation rate" (Eurocontrol data). Values as labelled in Eurocontrol's chart.
Before the pandemic, Europe cancelled between 1.5% and 2.0% of flights on the day of operation, with 1.7% in 2019. The rate jumped to 3.8% in 2020 and stayed at 2.3% in both 2021 and 2022. Newer data points to a calmer picture: Cirium's 2025 review gives Europe the lowest regional cancellation rate at 0.98%, with 171,003 flights cancelled, 10% fewer than in 2024. Eurocontrol's Performance Review Report 2025 adds that one-off shocks, such as the Heathrow substation fire of 21 March 2025 and the September 2025 cyberattack on check-in systems at Heathrow, Brussels and Berlin, show up mainly as cancellations and barely move annual averages. Airline-level punctuality is ranked in our most unreliable airlines in Europe.
Cancelled Flights at UK Airports
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) publishes cancellation figures for 25 airports. It counts a flight as cancelled when the cancellation is announced less than 24 hours before or after its scheduled time, so these are short-notice cancellations.
Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority, Punctuality Statistics 2025, Annual Summary Analysis, published February 2026. Rate = cancelled flights divided by matched, unmatched and cancelled planned arrivals and departures, airport totals.
Across all 25 airports, 20,085 of 1,930,928 planned arrivals and departures (1.04%) were cancelled in 2025. Smaller regional airports top the table: Teesside at 3.85%, Aberdeen at 3.40% and Southampton at 3.29%. Heathrow's rate was a moderate 1.32%, but at that size it still meant 6,376 cancellations, the most of any UK airport. The lowest rates were at East Midlands (0.12%), Bournemouth (0.21%) and Southend (0.26%), and among the London airports, Stansted (0.31%) and Luton (0.35%).
The Biggest Cancellation Events of 2025 and 2026
Storms dominate the US list, while Europe, Asia and the Middle East were hit hardest by strikes, crew shortages and war. Each count below comes from the body that measured it, so the methods differ and the figures should not be ranked against each other.
- US winter storm, 24 to 27 January 2026: 19,075 domestic cancellations, including 8,681 on 25 January (BTS).
- Middle East conflict, from 28 February 2026: flights between Europe and the Middle East fell to 373 on 1 March, 80% below the usual 2,000 a day, and settled at about 800 a day from 5 March. Eurocontrol reported that European airlines had cancelled flights to the region for almost the entire summer season (Eurocontrol, 31 March 2026). Traffic recovered after the US-Iran agreement of 17 June 2026, and by early July flights between Europe and the Middle East were 3% above 2025 levels (Eurocontrol).
- US government shutdown flight cuts, 7 to 17 November 2025: the FAA ordered airlines to cut domestic flights at 40 high-traffic airports, starting at 4% on 7 November and rising to 6% on 11 November. The planned steps to 8% and 10% were halted, the cut was lowered to 3%, and the order was cancelled on 17 November. BTS records 9,673 cancellations in those 11 days, 7,061 of them coded to the air traffic system, against 489 cancellations in total in the first six days of November.
- Northeast blizzard, 22 to 24 February 2026: 7,711 US cancellations (BTS).
- March 2026 storm, 15 and 16 March: 6,936 US cancellations (BTS).
- French air traffic control strike, 3 and 4 July 2025: 1,422 cancellations on each strike day, 4.7% of scheduled European flights, and about 200,000 passengers unable to fly as planned (Eurocontrol).
- IndiGo crew-rostering crisis, 3 to 5 December 2025: 2,507 flights cancelled and 1,852 delayed, stranding more than 300,000 passengers after revised flight duty time rules took effect (India's Ministry of Civil Aviation).
- Air Canada flight attendant strike, 16 to 19 August 2025: Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge suspended their roughly 700 daily flights, affecting about 130,000 customers a day (Air Canada).
- US winter storm, 9 to 11 January 2025: 5,482 cancellations, 2,856 of them on 10 January (BTS).
Your Rights When a Flight Is Cancelled: EU261, UK261 and US Rules
A cancellation always entitles you to your money back or a new flight. Whether you also get cash compensation depends on where you fly, how much notice the airline gave and why the flight was cancelled.
Rule | EU261 | UK261 | US DOT refund rule |
Flights covered | Departing the EU, or arriving in the EU on an EU airline | Departing the UK, or arriving in the UK on a UK or EU airline | Flights to, from or within the US |
Refund or rerouting | Choice of refund within 7 days, rerouting at the earliest opportunity, or rerouting later | Choice of refund, rerouting at the earliest opportunity, or rerouting later | Automatic cash refund if you decline the alternative: 7 business days (card) or 20 calendar days (other payment) |
Cash compensation | 250, 400 or 600 EUR by distance | 220, 350 or 520 GBP by distance | None required by federal law |
No compensation if | Told 14+ days ahead, or offered a qualifying reroute, or extraordinary circumstances | Same notice and extraordinary-circumstances rules as EU261 | Not applicable |
The 14-day rule is the one to remember. Under Article 5 of EU261, the airline owes no compensation if it told you about the cancellation at least two weeks before departure. With 7 to 14 days' notice, it escapes compensation only if it offers a flight leaving no more than 2 hours earlier and arriving less than 4 hours later than planned. With under 7 days' notice, the window shrinks to 1 hour earlier and less than 2 hours later. Airlines also avoid compensation if they prove extraordinary circumstances, such as severe weather, security risks or air traffic management decisions, but your right to a refund or rerouting, and to meals and a hotel while you wait, still applies. The same structure carries over to UK261, with amounts in pounds.
In the US, the DOT rule of April 2024 defines a cancellation for the first time and makes refunds automatic when an airline cancels or significantly changes a flight and you do not accept the alternative. A significant change includes departing or arriving 3 or more hours off schedule on a domestic trip, or 6 or more hours on an international one. Two later changes matter: in November 2025 DOT withdrew its planned rule on cash compensation for disruptions, and since December 2025 it has not enforced the refund rule when a flight is merely renumbered but otherwise operates as booked, a pause extended in July 2026 until 7 July 2027. In Europe, the EU institutions reached a provisional deal on 15 June 2026 to revise EU261. It keeps compensation after a cancellation or a 3-hour delay at 250, 400 and 600 EUR, and the new rules will apply 12 months after final adoption and publication.
Cancelled with less than 14 days' notice?
On flights from the EU or UK, or into the EU on an EU airline, you could claim up to 600 EUR.Check Your Flight
Outlook
Global cancellations fell in 2025, but 2026 has started badly. US reporting carriers cancelled more of their own flights from January to July 2026 (92,612) than in the first ten months of 2025 (79,680), largely because of three winter storms, and the war in the Middle East removed more than half of the flights between Europe and the Middle East from March until traffic recovered in early summer. Summer thunderstorms pushed July 2026 back above 2.6% in the US. The rules are shifting too: US refund protections are under review, and the revised EU261, adopted in July 2026, will only apply about a year after it is published in the Official Journal. Until then, the existing 14-day notice rule and the 250 to 600 EUR bands remain the benchmark for anyone whose European flight is cancelled.
References and Sources
- Cirium, On-Time Performance Review 2025: Airlines and Airports (Cancellation Report), January 2026
- US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present), TranStats, data January 2019 to July 2026, accessed 24 September 2026
- Eurocontrol, Standard Inputs for Economic Analyses, Release 10.0.2, chapter 15 "Operational cancellation rate", August 2026
- Eurocontrol Performance Review Commission, Performance Review Report 2025, March 2026
- Eurocontrol, Impact of the French ATC Strike of 3 and 4 July 2025 on European Aviation, 10 July 2025
- Eurocontrol, European Aviation Trends: Impact of the Current Middle East Crisis on European Aviation, 31 March 2026
- Eurocontrol, European Aviation Overview, week 27 (29 June to 5 July 2026)
- UK Civil Aviation Authority, Punctuality Statistics 2025 (Annual Summary Analysis), February 2026
- UK Civil Aviation Authority, Cancellations (passenger rights guidance), accessed 24 September 2026
- Ministry of Civil Aviation (India), Press Information Bureau, Indigo Flight Disruptions, December 2025: Findings, Enforcement Action and Systemic Reforms, 17 January 2026
- Air Canada, Air Canada and Air Canada Rouge Flights Suspended due to a Strike by CUPE Flight Attendants, 16 August 2025
- Federal Aviation Administration, Emergency Order Establishing Operating Limitations on the Use of Navigable Airspace, Federal Register, 12 November 2025 (effective 7 November 2025)
- Federal Aviation Administration, Cancellation of Emergency Order Establishing Operating Limitations on the Use of Navigable Airspace, Federal Register, 19 November 2025
- Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 on compensation and assistance to air passengers, EUR-Lex, 11 February 2004
- European Commission, Your Europe: Air Passenger Rights, accessed 24 September 2026
- European Commission, Commission Welcomes Landmark Agreement on Revised Air Passenger Rights, 15 June 2026
- US Department of Transportation, Refunds and Other Consumer Protections, final rule, 89 FR 32760, 26 April 2024
- 14 CFR 260.2, Definitions (refunds for airline fare and ancillary service fees), eCFR, accessed 24 September 2026
- US Department of Transportation, Airline Passenger Rights; Withdrawal, Federal Register, 17 November 2025
- US Department of Transportation, Airline Refunds and Other Consumer Protections (extension of enforcement discretion), Federal Register, 7 July 2026
Methodology Note
Headline US totals and rates (118,168 cancellations and a 1.53% rate in 2025; 2.31% in January to July 2026 against 1.72% a year earlier) come directly from BTS's published Airline On-Time Statistics tables, which count marketing, operating and codeshare carriers and match our flight disruption statistics page. The cause, monthly, daily, airline and airport breakdowns, which those tables do not give at this level, are AirAdvisor aggregations of the BTS flight-level Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance files for January 2019 to July 2026 (the latest month published, released September 2026), counted by operating carrier and flight date. Those files cover only domestic flights that reporting carriers operate themselves, so their totals are lower (102,876 cancellations and 1.47% in 2025) than the published tables, and both differ from third-party trackers that include international flights. Cause shares use BTS cancellation codes; 2020 and 2021 are excluded because pandemic schedules distorted totals and most 2020 cancellations were filed under the security code. Airport rates count departures only. Regional figures and rates come from Cirium's 2025 review, with rates calculated by AirAdvisor from Cirium's tracked-flight and cancellation totals. Eurocontrol's operational cancellation series ends in 2022 in its August 2026 release, and values are read from the one-decimal labels in its chart. UK figures use CAA airport totals, which count arrivals and departures separately (a domestic UK flight appears at both ends) and include only cancellations announced within 24 hours of departure. Because Cirium, BTS, Eurocontrol and the CAA define cancellations and coverage differently, their rates are not directly comparable. Event counts are taken from the body that measured each event. Legal summaries describe the rules in force on 24 September 2026 and are not legal advice. Percentages are rounded to one or two decimals.
Author:
Amy LancelotteJob/Position: Senior Writer & Content Strategist
Amy Lancelotte is a Senior Content Writer and editorial contributor at AirAdvisor with over seven years of experience producing research-based articles for international audiences. Her work focuses on travel, aviation, and air passenger rights, with an emphasis on factual accuracy, verified data, and clear, reader-first explanations.
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