Most Unreliable Airlines in Europe: Statistics and Insights for 2026
European airlines ran more punctually in 2025 than in 2024, but the distance between the best and the weakest performers stayed wide. In Eurocontrol's ranking of the 30 busiest operators, 26 percentage points separated the top carrier from the bottom one. Summer 2026 then brought fresh strain, with August delays running above the previous year.
For travellers, on-time performance is the most practical reliability measure available: it shows how often an airline lands when it said it would. Long delays matter for a second reason. Under EU Regulation 261/2004, an arrival three or more hours late can entitle passengers to compensation of up to 600 EUR, unless extraordinary circumstances apply. Every ranking below names its dataset, period and metric. For the worldwide picture, see our global flight disruption statistics.
Key European Airline Punctuality Statistics at a Glance
- Iberia Express was Europe's most punctual airline in 2025, with 88.94% of flights on time, its third regional title in a row.
Source: Cirium On-Time Performance Review 2025 - SAS landed 86.09% of its 249,674 flights on time in 2025, third in Cirium's global airline ranking.
Source: Cirium On-Time Performance Review 2025 - TAP Group ranked lowest for arrival punctuality among Europe's 30 busiest operators in 2025, at 61%.
Source: Eurocontrol European Aviation Overview 2025 - Royal Air Maroc, TUI Group and Jet2.com each recorded 71% arrival punctuality, the next-lowest scores in the same ranking.
Source: Eurocontrol European Aviation Overview 2025 - Network-wide arrival punctuality reached 76.1% in 2025, up 3.5 points on 2024 but 2.0 points below 2019.
Source: Eurocontrol European Aviation Overview 2025 - The average departure delay fell to 14.6 minutes per flight in 2025, from 17.5 minutes in 2024.
Source: Eurocontrol European Aviation Overview 2025 - 27 of the 30 busiest carriers improved their arrival punctuality in 2025, with TAP Group and Iberia Regional the only ones to decline.
Source: Eurocontrol European Aviation Overview 2025 - Low-cost carriers operated about 35% of all flights in 2025, overtaking mainline airlines for the first time.
Source: Eurocontrol European Aviation Overview 2025 - SkyExpress landed only 48.9% of its flights on time in July 2026, one of three European airlines below 60%.
Source: OAG On-Time Performance, July 2026 - Jet2.com operated 16,160 flights in August 2026 without a single cancellation, but only 60% arrived on time.
Source: OAG On-Time Performance, August 2026 - easyJet cancelled about 1,330 flights in August 2026, a 2.2% rate, one of only two European carriers OAG reported above 2%.
Source: OAG On-Time Performance, August 2026 - Wizz Air's on-time rate fell from 87.8% in May 2026 to 73.0% in July 2026 as summer schedules peaked.
Source: OAG low-cost carrier reports, May and July 2026 - July was 2025's most delayed month, averaging 21.2 minutes of departure delay per flight across Europe.
Source: Eurocontrol CODA monthly briefs, 2025-2026 - August 2026 averaged 19.3 minutes of departure delay per flight, 2.3 minutes more than August 2025.
Source: Eurocontrol CODA, August 2026 - Chania recorded 8.30 minutes of airport ATFM delay per flight in 2025, the highest in the Eurocontrol network.
Source: Eurocontrol Network Operations Report 2025 - Lisbon had the lowest departure and arrival punctuality of the network's 79 busiest airports in 2025.
Source: Eurocontrol Network Operations Report 2025
Europe's Most Punctual Airlines in 2025
Start with the top of the table, because it sets the benchmark the weaker performers are measured against. Cirium's annual review counts a flight as on time when it reaches the gate within 14 minutes 59 seconds of schedule, and it draws on more than 600 real-time data sources, from airlines and airports to civil aviation authorities.
Source: Cirium, 2025 On-Time Performance Review, published 2 January 2026. On time = arrival within 14:59 minutes of scheduled gate arrival, full year 2025.
Iberia Express topped Europe with 88.94% of its 37,119 flights on time, ahead of SAS (86.09%) and Austrian (83.74%). Tenth-placed Finnair still reached 79.67%, so the whole European top 10 sits inside a band of 9.27 percentage points. Three of the ten are low-cost carriers (Iberia Express, Vueling and Norwegian), and scale varies enormously: Turkish Airlines placed eighth while operating 421,090 flights, more than eleven times the volume of Iberia Express.
Which Airlines Ranked Lowest for On-Time Arrivals in 2025
Cirium publishes only the top of its tables. For the bottom, the most authoritative public source is Eurocontrol, the intergovernmental organisation that manages Europe's air traffic network. Its European Aviation Overview 2025 ranks the 30 busiest aircraft operators by arrival punctuality, defined as the share of flights arriving no later than 15 minutes after schedule, and names the top four and the bottom four.
Source: Eurocontrol, European Aviation Overview 2025, published 23 January 2026. Arrival punctuality (OTP15) = share of flights arriving no later than 15 minutes after scheduled time, 1 January to 31 December 2025, 30 busiest aircraft operators by flights. The three operators at 71% are shown in the order Eurocontrol lists them.
TAP Group ranked lowest for on-time arrivals among the 30 busiest operators in Eurocontrol's 2025 data, at 61%, which means roughly four in ten of its arrivals came in more than 15 minutes late. It was also one of only two carriers in the group whose punctuality fell compared with 2024, down 3 points. Its main hub also struggled: Eurocontrol's Network Operations Report 2025 found that Lisbon had the lowest departure and arrival punctuality of the 79 busiest airports in the network, and attributed Lisbon's delays to weather and aerodrome capacity limits. Royal Air Maroc, TUI Group and Jet2.com followed at 71% each, against a network average of 76.1%. The SAS Group led at 87%.
Lowest-Ranked Airlines by Dataset, Metric and Period
No single dataset covers every European airline, so the fairest way to read the bottom of the table is source by source. The table lists the carriers each published dataset used in this article places or names at the low end, with the exact metric behind the figure.
| Dataset (published) | Metric | Period | Carrier(s) at the low end | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Eurocontrol European Aviation Overview 2025 (23 Jan 2026) | Arrivals within 15 min, 30 busiest operators | 2025 | TAP Group (ranked lowest) | 61% |
| Eurocontrol European Aviation Overview 2025 (23 Jan 2026) | Arrivals within 15 min, 30 busiest operators | 2025 | Royal Air Maroc, TUI Group, Jet2.com | 71% each |
| OAG monthly on-time performance (6 Aug 2026) | Arrivals within 15 min, airlines with 1,500+ flights | July 2026 | SkyExpress (one of three European airlines below 60%) | 48.9% |
| OAG monthly on-time performance (10 Sep 2026) | Arrivals within 15 min | August 2026 | SkyExpress; Jet2.com (both with zero cancellations) | 52%; 60% |
| OAG low-cost carrier report (20 Aug 2026) | Arrivals within 15 min, 20 largest LCCs | July 2026 | Jet2.com (lowest European carrier in the group) | 61.4% |
| OAG low-cost carrier report (18 Jun 2026) | Arrivals within 15 min, 20 largest LCCs | May 2026 | Jet2.com (19th of 20) | 69.0% |
| OAG monthly on-time performance (10 Sep 2026) | Cancelled flights as % of scheduled | August 2026 | easyJet (one of two European carriers above 2%, with British Airways) | 2.2% (about 1,330 flights) |
How to read these rankings: each provider uses its own airline list, time period and qualification thresholds, so the same carrier can place differently from one source to the next. On-time performance (OTP) measures the share of flights within 15 minutes of schedule. It does not show how long the late flights were delayed or who caused the delay, and an airline that cancels nothing can still post a low OTP, because every flight it operates late counts against it.
Low-Cost Carriers in Summer 2026: On-Time Arrivals
Low-cost airlines now operate about 35% of all flights in Eurocontrol's network, more than mainline carriers, so their summer punctuality shapes the trips of a very large share of European travellers. OAG's July 2026 low-cost ranking covers the 20 largest budget carriers worldwide by arrivals, and eight of them are European.
Source: OAG, Asia leads the way: LCC on-time performance in July 2026, published 20 August 2026. OTP = arrival within 15 minutes of schedule; carriers with 1,500+ arrivals and 80%+ schedule coverage; European carriers among the top 20 LCCs by arrivals volume.
SunExpress led the European group at 80.4%, followed by Pegasus Airlines at 76.7% and Wizz Air at 73.0%. Jet2.com posted the lowest on-time rate of the European carriers in the group, 61.4%, with easyJet next at 64.7%. Ryanair, Europe's largest operator by daily flights, landed 68.1% of its July arrivals on time. Cirium, using its own data, put Europe's regional on-time rate at 78.71% for July 2026; seven of the eight OAG-ranked European budget carriers came in below that level, although the two providers' samples are not identical.
How Summer Demand Hit Budget Airline Punctuality: May vs July 2026
The same airlines look very different in May and July. Setting OAG's two low-cost releases side by side shows how much punctuality each carrier gave up as summer schedules reached their peak.
Source: OAG, How Punctual Were Low-Cost Airlines in May 2026?, published 18 June 2026, and Asia leads the way: LCC on-time performance in July 2026, published 20 August 2026. OTP = arrival within 15 minutes of schedule. Percentage-point changes calculated by AirAdvisor.
Of the five carriers shown, Wizz Air had the steepest fall, from 87.8% in May, when it led the 20 largest low-cost carriers worldwide, to 73.0% in July: a drop of 14.8 points. easyJet fell 12.3 points and Ryanair 10.4 points, while Pegasus held up best, losing 3.9 points. Jet2.com lost 7.6 points but started from the lowest base, 69.0%, and finished lowest, at 61.4%. Eurocontrol's summer 2026 data shows the same seasonal pressure: between June and August, 681,000 flights, 21% of the total, were delayed by air traffic flow restrictions, and capacity and staffing shortages caused 49% of en-route delay.
Airline Cancellation Rates in August 2026
Punctuality is only half of reliability. A cancelled flight never lands late, so OAG also reports cancellation rates, and it counts cancellations as not on time in its OTP figures. August is the busiest month of the year, which makes it the toughest test of an airline's schedule.
Source: OAG, Airlines Rising to the Challenge of the Busiest Month, published 10 September 2026. Cancellation rate = cancelled flights as a share of scheduled flights, August 2026. British Airways also cancelled more than 2% of its flights; OAG did not publish its exact rate.
OAG reported that easyJet cancelled about 1,330 flights in August 2026, or 2.2% of its programme, and that British Airways was the only other European airline to cancel more than 2% of its planned flights. OAG put Ryanair's cancellation rate at 0.4%. Wizz Air cancelled just 19 flights (0.1%). Jet2.com and SkyExpress cancelled none at all, yet only 60% and 52% of their flights arrived on time. For passengers, that meant the flights went ahead, but many of them arrived more than 15 minutes late.
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Europe's Most Delay-Affected Airports in 2025
Airline punctuality depends heavily on where an airline flies. Eurocontrol measures airport ATFM (air traffic flow management) delay: the time aircraft are held because a destination airport cannot accept more arrivals, whether the constraint is weather, runway capacity or air traffic control staffing.
Source: Eurocontrol Network Manager, Network Operations Report 2025, edition 1.0, 4 May 2026, Figure 13. The 12 highest of the 20 airports with the most airport ATFM delay per flight in 2025; network average 0.68 minutes per flight.
Chania on Crete topped the list with 8.30 minutes of airport ATFM delay per flight, more than 12 times the network average of 0.68 minutes, with air traffic control capacity the main constraint. Athens followed at 5.56 minutes and Amsterdam Schiphol at 4.90 minutes; Schiphol also accumulated the largest total of any airport, 1,190,455 minutes in Eurocontrol's airport arrival ATFM delay data, split almost evenly between aerodrome capacity (49.8%) and weather (48.7%). Three of the top six are Greek airports, and Eurocontrol reports that airport air traffic control capacity delays rose 40.3% in 2025, mainly in Greece. Among the 20 busiest airports, Lisbon had departure punctuality below 50%, while Copenhagen, Istanbul, Heathrow, Vienna and Dublin averaged above 80%. For traffic rankings, see our busiest airports statistics.
Summer Peaks: Departure Delays in 2025 and 2026
Delays in Europe follow the calendar. Eurocontrol's monthly all-causes delay briefs track the average departure delay per flight across the ECAC area (the 44 member states of the European Civil Aviation Conference), and the summer months stand out every year.
Source: Eurocontrol CODA, All-causes delay to air transport in Europe, monthly briefs January to August 2026, published 23 February to 22 September 2026. 2025 values are the revised prior-year figures reported in the 2026 briefs. Delay counted from 1 minute, all causes.
July 2025 was the peak, at 21.2 minutes per flight. July 2026 came in lower at 18.0 minutes, but August 2026 reversed the improvement: 19.3 minutes per flight, 2.3 minutes more than August 2025, after adverse weather on 28 August, capacity problems at Zurich and disruption at Catania linked to Mount Etna's volcanic activity. Reactionary delay, the knock-on effect of an aircraft arriving late for its next rotation, contributed 9.3 minutes of that August average. Winter brings its own spikes: snow and low-visibility operations pushed January 2026 to 18.1 minutes. The previous summer had itself been a recovery, with Eurocontrol measuring arrival punctuality of 71.6% between 1 June and 15 September 2025, up from 65.2% a year earlier. Our peak travel season delay statistics break these seasonal patterns down further.
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Outlook: What the Data Suggests for the Rest of 2026
The 2025 figures showed how quickly European punctuality can recover when the weather is kinder and air traffic control capacity holds. Summer 2026 has been more uneven, with a better July and a worse August than the year before, and Eurocontrol's base scenario expects flights to grow by more than 3% in 2026 (forecast), which keeps pressure on the same constrained airports and airspace. Rankings will keep shifting from month to month, so the most useful check before booking is an airline's record in a dataset and season that match the trip. Delays are not the only disruption travellers face; our baggage mishandling statistics cover the other common one.
References and Sources
- Cirium, 2025 On-Time Performance Review (results announcement and rankings), 2 January 2026
- Cirium, The Monthly On-Time Performance Report: July 2026, August 2026
- Eurocontrol, European Aviation Overview 2025, 23 January 2026
- Eurocontrol Network Manager, Network Operations Report 2025, edition 1.0, 4 May 2026
- Eurocontrol, Overview of European Air Traffic During Summer 2025 (European Aviation Trends), 6 October 2025
- Eurocontrol CODA, All-causes delay to air transport in Europe: August 2026, 22 September 2026
- Eurocontrol CODA, All-causes delay to air transport in Europe: July 2026, 20 August 2026
- Eurocontrol CODA, All-causes delay to air transport in Europe, January to June 2026 editions, 23 February to 23 July 2026
- OAG, On-time performance: July's most punctual airlines, 6 August 2026
- OAG, Airlines Rising to the Challenge of the Busiest Month (August 2026 on-time performance), 10 September 2026
- OAG, Asia leads the way: LCC on-time performance in July 2026, 20 August 2026
- OAG, How Punctual Were Low-Cost Airlines in May 2026?, 18 June 2026
- European Parliament and Council, Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 on air passenger rights, 11 February 2004
Methodology Note
Airline rankings come only from published datasets and are reported with each source's own metric: Cirium and OAG count a flight as on time when it arrives within 15 minutes of schedule (Cirium specifies 14:59 minutes), and Eurocontrol's operator ranking uses the share of flights arriving no later than 15 minutes after schedule; no airline is described as unreliable except by reference to one of these measures. Cirium publishes only its top 10 per region, and Eurocontrol names only the top four and bottom four of its 30 busiest operators, so carriers outside those lists are not ranked here. Where sources disagree, the primary body's headline figure is used and the difference noted: Eurocontrol's European Aviation Overview gives 2025 network arrival punctuality of 76.1% (+3.5 points) and an average departure delay of 14.6 minutes, while its Performance Review Report gives +3.6 points and 14.7 minutes and its Network Operations Report gives 75.4% from an operational estimate; summer 2025 arrival punctuality is 71.6% for 1 June to 15 September in Eurocontrol's summer overview and 72.3% in the Network Operations Report; the low-cost share of 2025 flights appears as both 35.2% and 35.4% in the same overview, so it is rounded to about 35%; and 2025 monthly delay values were revised slightly in later briefs (July 2025 from 21.0 to 21.2 minutes, June from 16.0 to 16.7, August from 17.1 to 17.0), so the revised figures are used for like-for-like comparison. OAG's August 2026 release states a Ryanair cancellation rate of 0.4% alongside scheduled and operated counts that imply a higher share; the stated rate is reported. Eurocontrol CODA briefs are based on partial airline data (55% to 65% of IFR flights in 2026), and Tel Aviv appears in the airport chart because Eurocontrol includes it in its network. Percentage-point changes and ratios were calculated by AirAdvisor from the published values and rounded to one decimal place; the only forward-looking figure, 2026 traffic growth, is labelled as a forecast. Figures from different providers are not directly comparable because airline samples, thresholds and data coverage differ.
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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