Statistics on Late Arrivals by North American Airlines
Roughly one US airline flight in five arrives late. In 2025, 1.69 million domestic flights by the largest US airlines and their regional partners reached the gate 15 minutes or more behind schedule, and the first seven months of 2026 brought a lower on-time rate than the same months of 2025.
Why this matters: a late arrival is where a delay becomes the passenger's problem. It decides whether you make a connection, catch the last train home or lose an evening. Punctuality also varies far more between airlines than most travellers expect, and the official US data, the independent Cirium rankings that cover Canada and Mexico, and the delay causes airlines must report each tell a different part of the story. This page brings them together, with the dataset, period and measure stated for every airline figure.
Key North American Airline Late Arrival Statistics at a Glance
- 76.42% of scheduled US domestic flights arrived on time in 2025, down from 78.10% in 2024, across all US reporting carriers and their branded codeshare partners.
Source: US DOT, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2026 - 21.78% of scheduled US flights, 1.69 million in total, arrived 15 or more minutes late in 2025; a further 1.53% were cancelled and 0.27% diverted.
Source: BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, 2025 (AirAdvisor calculation) - Hawaiian Airlines had the highest 2025 on-time arrival rate of the 14 US reporting operating carriers, 81.95%, followed by Delta Air Lines at 79.12%.
Source: US DOT, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2026 - PSA Airlines had the lowest 2025 on-time arrival rate of the 14 reporting operating carriers, 68.96%, with Frontier Airlines next at 70.68%.
Source: US DOT, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2026 - Frontier Airlines had the highest share of flights arriving 15+ minutes late among the 14 reporting carriers in 2025, 27.37%; Hawaiian Airlines had the lowest, 17.12%.
Source: BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, 2025 (AirAdvisor calculation) - A late US flight arrived an average of 74.0 minutes behind schedule in 2025, up from 72.2 minutes in 2024 and 69.7 minutes in 2019.
Source: BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, 2019-2025 (AirAdvisor calculation) - PSA Airlines' late arrivals averaged 91.1 minutes in 2025, the longest of the 14 reporting carriers; Alaska Airlines' averaged 51.4 minutes, the shortest.
Source: BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, 2025 (AirAdvisor calculation) - Late-arriving aircraft caused 40.0% of US arrival delay minutes in 2025, more than any other reported cause.
Source: BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, 2025 - Causes within the airlines' own control accounted for 31.8% of 2025 delay minutes, and the National Aviation System, which includes air traffic control, for 21.6%.
Source: BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, 2025 - 75.1% of US flights arrived on time from January to July 2026, against 75.5% in the same months of 2025.
Source: US DOT, Air Travel Consumer Report, September 2026; BTS delay-cause data, 2025 - July 2026 was the worst month of 2026 so far, with 69.5% of flights on time.
Source: US DOT, Air Travel Consumer Report, September 2026 - 2.31% of scheduled US flights were cancelled from January to July 2026, up from 1.72% in the same months of 2025.
Source: BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, 2026 (AirAdvisor calculation) - Alaska Airlines' network ranked first among US marketing carriers from January to July 2026, with 79.6% of flights on time.
Source: US DOT, Air Travel Consumer Report, September 2026 - Delta Air Lines topped Cirium's 2025 North America airline ranking with 80.90% on-time arrivals across 1.8 million flights.
Source: Cirium, On-Time Performance Review 2025, January 2026 - WestJet (73.58%) and Air Canada (73.26%) ranked 8th and 9th in Cirium's 2025 North America top 10.
Source: Cirium, On-Time Performance Review 2025, January 2026 - Aeromexico was Cirium's most on-time global airline for the second consecutive year, at 90.02% in 2025.
Source: Cirium, On-Time Performance Review 2025, January 2026
US Airline On-Time Arrival Rates in 2025: All 14 Reporting Carriers
US airlines with at least 0.5% of domestic scheduled passenger revenue must report on-time data for their domestic scheduled flights to the Department of Transportation (DOT). In 2025 that meant 14 operating carriers, from national brands to the regional airlines that fly under American, Delta and United colours. DOT counts a flight as on time if it reaches the gate less than 15 minutes after schedule, and it treats cancelled and diverted flights as not on time.
Source: US DOT, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2026, Table 1D (reporting operating carriers, January to December 2025). On time = arrived less than 15 minutes after schedule; cancelled and diverted flights count as not on time.
The spread was 13 points. Hawaiian Airlines led DOT's 2025 operating-carrier table at 81.95%, and Delta Air Lines was the best of the mainland carriers at 79.12%. At the other end, PSA Airlines, a regional carrier that flies for American, recorded 68.96%, with Frontier Airlines (70.68%), JetBlue Airways (72.34%) and American Airlines (72.70%) also below 73%. All 14 carriers together reached 76.34%, and 11 of the 14 were less punctual than in 2024. The 76.42% headline figure is slightly higher because it also counts about 735,000 flights by smaller regional partners, such as Endeavor Air and Horizon Air, that fly under the major airlines' brands but do not report as operating carriers. For a closer look at how these airlines compare by size, see our guide to the largest airlines in North America.
How Late Are Late Flights? Average Arrival Delay by Airline
An on-time rate says how often an airline runs late, but not by how much. The BTS delay-cause tables record the total minutes of arrival delay for every flight that reached the gate 15 or more minutes late, which makes it possible to work out how long the typical late flight was held up at each carrier.
Source: AirAdvisor calculation from BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, January to December 2025 (downloaded 24 September 2026). Total arrival delay minutes divided by flights arriving 15+ minutes late, for the 14 DOT reporting operating carriers.
Across all carriers, a late arrival in 2025 was 74.0 minutes behind schedule on average. Delay length does not track the on-time ranking closely. Alaska Airlines arrived late more often than Delta in 2025 (22.76% of its scheduled flights against 19.53%), yet its late flights averaged only 51.4 minutes, the shortest of the 14 carriers. PSA Airlines had the longest average, 91.1 minutes, followed by Allegiant Air (85.4) and Frontier Airlines (84.4). Southwest Airlines, the carrier with the most scheduled flights, kept its late arrivals to an average of 57.0 minutes.
| Carrier (2025) | On time (DOT) | Arrived 15+ min late | Cancelled | Avg minutes per late arrival |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaiian Airlines | 81.95% | 17.12% | 0.82% | 53.0 |
| Delta Air Lines | 79.12% | 19.53% | 1.08% | 73.3 |
| SkyWest Airlines | 77.90% | 20.36% | 1.41% | 83.9 |
| Southwest Airlines | 77.76% | 21.16% | 0.85% | 57.0 |
| United Airlines | 77.65% | 21.23% | 0.82% | 72.5 |
| Spirit Airlines | 77.25% | 21.04% | 1.50% | 74.4 |
| Envoy Air | 76.99% | 20.52% | 2.24% | 63.3 |
| Republic Airways | 75.77% | 20.79% | 3.26% | 72.2 |
| Alaska Airlines | 75.75% | 22.76% | 1.21% | 51.4 |
| Allegiant Air | 74.46% | 24.77% | 0.47% | 85.4 |
| American Airlines | 72.70% | 25.16% | 1.82% | 83.3 |
| JetBlue Airways | 72.34% | 25.62% | 1.65% | 76.1 |
| Frontier Airlines | 70.68% | 27.37% | 1.77% | 84.4 |
| PSA Airlines | 68.96% | 26.21% | 4.58% | 91.1 |
| All flights incl. regional partners | 76.42% | 21.78% | 1.53% | 74.0 |
The table shows why PSA sits last on DOT's on-time list even though Frontier had more late arrivals: PSA cancelled 4.58% of its 2025 flights, the highest rate of the 14 carriers, and DOT counts every cancellation against the on-time rate. Frontier cancelled 1.77% but had the highest late-arrival share, 27.37%.
US Late Arrivals Are More Frequent and Longer Than in 2019
The pandemic years 2020 and 2021 flew collapsed schedules, so the fairest comparison is with 2019. The chart tracks two measures side by side: how often flights arrived late, and how long those late flights were held up.
Source: AirAdvisor calculation from BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, full years 2019 and 2022 to 2025 (marketing, reporting operating and codeshare carriers). Late share uses scheduled flights as the base; 2020 and 2021 omitted.
Both measures reached their highest level of the years shown in 2025. The late-arrival share rose from 18.88% in 2019 to 21.78% in 2025, and the average late flight went from 69.7 to 74.0 minutes behind schedule. Total arrival delay grew faster than traffic: US carriers logged 124.7 million minutes of arrival delay in 2025, up 12.9% on the 110.5 million minutes of 2024, while scheduled flights rose 2.5%. For how the knock-on effect of one late aircraft spreads through the rest of the day, see our analysis of airline delay recovery time.
Flying between North America and Europe?
If your flight left the EU, or landed in the EU on an EU airline, and reached your destination 3+ hours late, you could be owed up to 600 EUR under EU261.Check Your Flight
Late Arrivals Month by Month, 2025 to 2026
US punctuality follows the calendar. Summer thunderstorms, packed schedules and holiday peaks push the on-time rate down, while the quieter weeks of early autumn push it up. DOT publishes the monthly figure for all reporting carriers and their codeshare partners.
Source: US DOT, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2026 and September 2026, Table 1B totals (reporting marketing carriers including branded codeshare partners). July 2026 is the latest month published.
September 2025 was the best month in the period, with 83.1% of flights on time, and July 2025 the worst at 69.2%. July 2026 came close to that low at 69.5%, the weakest month of 2026 so far. Over January to July 2026, 75.1% of flights arrived on time, a little below the 75.5% of the same months in 2025, while the cancellation rate rose to 2.31% from 1.72%. Our page on peak travel seasons and flight delays explains the seasonal pattern in more detail.
Which US Airlines Are Most On Time in 2026?
DOT also ranks airlines as marketing carriers, which folds in the regional partners that sell and fly under a major airline's brand. That view is closer to what a passenger books. The chart compares full-year 2025 with the latest year-to-date figures, which cover January to July 2026.
Source: US DOT, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2026 (Table 1C, full year 2025) and September 2026 (Table 1B, year to date January to July 2026). Hawaiian Airlines is no longer ranked separately in 2026; Spirit Airlines is listed as N/A from June 2026.
Alaska Airlines' network moved from fifth place in 2025 to first in January to July 2026, with 79.6% of flights on time. DOT no longer ranks Hawaiian Airlines separately in 2026: its footnote explains that Hawaiian-branded flights are now operated by Alaska Airlines, after the two received a single operating certificate on 29 October 2025, so Alaska's 2026 figure includes Hawaiian-branded flights and is not directly comparable with its 2025 figure. Delta's network was second at 78.1%. The steepest fall was at Southwest Airlines, from 77.76% in 2025 to 73.7% in January to July 2026. JetBlue Airways dropped from 72.34% to 68.5%, the lowest year-to-date rate of the eight marketing carriers DOT still ranks. The 2026 figures cover January to July only, which includes the summer peak but not the calmer autumn months, so part of each change reflects the season: across all carriers, the on-time rate was 75.1% in January to July 2026 against 75.5% in the same months of 2025. Spirit Airlines has no 2026 year-to-date figure because it stopped flying on 2 May 2026 and DOT lists it as not applicable from June 2026.
What Causes Late Arrivals in the US
Airlines must assign every arrival delay of 15 minutes or more to one or more of five BTS categories. Measured by minutes rather than flights, the split below shows where the lost time comes from. "Airline" covers causes within the carrier's control, such as maintenance, crew, cleaning and baggage loading; the National Aviation System (NAS) covers air traffic control, airport operations, heavy traffic and non-extreme weather.
Source: BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, January to December 2025. Share of total arrival delay minutes for flights arriving 15+ minutes late; security = 0.13%.
The largest slice is knock-on disruption: a late-arriving aircraft caused 40.0% of delay minutes in 2025, or 49.9 million of the 124.7 million minutes recorded, because a plane that lands late usually leaves late on its next trip. Airline-controlled causes came second at 31.8% and the NAS third at 21.6%. Extreme weather accounts for only 6.5% directly, but that understates weather's role, since non-extreme weather is filed under the NAS and weather also sets off many knock-on delays. The pattern held in January to July 2026, when late-arriving aircraft accounted for 40.6% of delay minutes, up from 39.7% in the same months of 2025. For the wider picture, including cancellations worldwide, see our global flight disruption statistics.
Why Each US Airline Ran Late: Delay Causes by Carrier
The national split hides large differences between airlines. Some lose most of their time to knock-on delays, others to their own operations or to the air traffic system around their hubs. The chart covers the same 14 reporting carriers for 2025, ordered by the late-aircraft share; each airline assigns the causes of its own delays.
Source: AirAdvisor calculation from BTS, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes, January to December 2025. Delay minutes of each carrier by reported cause; NAS = National Aviation System.
Southwest Airlines had the highest late-aircraft share in 2025, 51.2% of its delay minutes, with PSA Airlines (50.4%) and Frontier Airlines (50.3%) close behind. Hawaiian Airlines had the highest share assigned to the airline itself, 61.7%, although it had the lowest late-arrival share of the 14. Spirit Airlines attributed 46.4% of its delay minutes to the National Aviation System, the most of any carrier, and SkyWest Airlines reported the largest extreme-weather share, 14.2%. Frontier Airlines reported no security delay minutes at all in 2025.
North American Airlines Ranked: Cirium's 2025 On-Time Review, Including Canada and Mexico
DOT data covers only US domestic flights. To compare US airlines with Canadian and Mexican carriers, the most complete public source is the aviation analytics firm Cirium, which tracks flights worldwide and ranks the largest airlines in each region every year. Cirium measures on-time arrival as the share of completed flights that reach the gate within 15 minutes of schedule, so cancellations are excluded and international flights are included. The chart shows every US, Canadian and Mexican airline in Cirium's 2025 regional ranking tables: the full North America top 10 plus Aeromexico, which Cirium ranks in Latin America.
Source: Cirium, On-Time Performance Review 2025, January 2026 (North America airline ranking, all 10 airlines, and Latin America ranking for Aeromexico). On time = completed flights arriving within 15 minutes of schedule.
Delta Air Lines ranked first in North America for 2025 with 80.90% on-time arrivals across 1.8 million flights, ahead of Alaska Airlines (79.20%) and Spirit Airlines (78.83%). The two Canadian airlines in the top 10 finished near the bottom: WestJet eighth at 73.58% and Air Canada ninth at 73.26%, although Cirium notes both improved by roughly two percentage points on 2024. Frontier Airlines was tenth at 72.14%. The ten airlines combined reached 76.48%. Porter Airlines is not among the ten airlines in Cirium's published 2025 North America table, so there is no comparable figure for it.
Mexico's flag carrier stands out. Aeromexico arrived on time on 90.02% of its 188,859 flights in 2025 and won Cirium's global airline award for the second consecutive year, placing second in Latin America behind Copa Airlines (90.75%), which Cirium ranks only regionally because it does not meet the volume and network thresholds for the global table. No other Mexican airline appears in Cirium's 2025 Latin America ranking table.
Cirium's monthly data for 2026 shows WestJet moving ahead. WestJet was the most on-time airline in North America in Cirium's June 2026 report, with 86.4% of flights on time, according to the airline, and Cirium named it the North American leader again in its July and August 2026 reports. In July 2026, Cirium's North America average fell to 71.58%.
Why Cirium and DOT figures differ: both count a flight as on time if it arrives less than 15 minutes late, but DOT covers only US domestic flights and counts cancellations as not on time, while Cirium covers all flights, including international ones, and measures only completed flights. That is why Delta shows 79.12% in DOT's 2025 operating-carrier data and 80.90% in Cirium's review. Compare airlines within one dataset, never across the two.
Delayed 3+ hours on a flight to or from Europe?Flights departing the EU, or arriving in the EU on an EU airline, can qualify for up to 600 EUR under EU261.Check Your Flight
Outlook
The US numbers for 2026 so far offer little relief. The on-time rate for January to July is slightly below the same months of 2025, cancellations are running higher, and the late-aircraft share of delay minutes has edged up, which means disruption is still spreading through the day rather than being absorbed. The ranking has shifted, with Alaska Airlines' network, which now includes Hawaiian-branded flights, leading DOT's year-to-date table and Southwest Airlines showing the largest gap between its full-year 2025 rate and its January-to-July 2026 rate, while in Canada WestJet has led Cirium's monthly North America table through the summer of 2026. The next DOT release will add August 2026, and Cirium's full-year 2026 review is due in January 2027.
References and Sources
- US Department of Transportation, Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, Air Travel Consumer Report, February 2026 (flight delays December 2025 and January to December 2025, Tables 1B, 1C and 1D)
- US Department of Transportation, Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, Air Travel Consumer Report, September 2026 (flight delays July 2026, Tables 1, 1A and 1B)
- US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes (TranStats), data January 2019 to July 2026, downloaded 24 September 2026
- Cirium, On-Time Performance Review 2025, January 2026
- Cirium, The Monthly On-Time Performance Report, July 2026 (10 August 2026) and August 2026 (September 2026)
- WestJet, WestJet leads North America in on-time performance for the second month in a row, news release, July 2026
Methodology Note
Headline on-time rates are DOT's published figures from the Air Travel Consumer Report: the February 2026 edition for full-year 2025 (Table 1C for the 10 marketing carrier networks and their 7,736,770 scheduled flights, Table 1D for the 14 reporting operating carriers and their 7,001,619 flights) and the September 2026 edition for monthly and January-to-July 2026 figures, which DOT displays to one decimal place. Late-arrival shares, cancellation shares, average delay minutes, cause shares by carrier and all January-to-July 2025 comparisons are AirAdvisor calculations from the BTS Airline On-Time Statistics and Delay Causes tables, which cover marketing, reporting operating and codeshare carriers and reproduce DOT's 76.42% total for 2025; late-arrival shares use scheduled flights as the base, so on-time, late, cancelled and diverted shares add up to 100%, and average delay is total arrival delay minutes divided by flights arriving 15 or more minutes late. Operating-carrier flight counts in the BTS tables differ from DOT's Table 1D by less than 0.1% for a few regional carriers. Our flight delay passenger impact and airline delay recovery time pages count only the 14 reporting operating carriers and use flights that arrived as the base for late shares, which is why they show 22.31% of 2025 arrivals as late (19.11% in 2019), 72.9 minutes per late flight, a January-to-July 2026 cancellation rate of 2.25% and a late-aircraft share of 39.8%, against 21.78% (18.88%), 74.0 minutes, 2.31% and 40.6% on this page. The 2025 cause split (40.0% late-arriving aircraft, 31.8% airline, 21.6% National Aviation System, 6.5% extreme weather, 0.1% security) is the BTS delay-cause total for 2025. Cirium figures come from its On-Time Performance Review 2025 and monthly reports and are not comparable with DOT figures because Cirium excludes cancellations and includes international flights; the WestJet June 2026 figure is as stated by WestJet, citing Cirium. We found no official Canadian or Mexican airline-by-airline on-time table comparable to the BTS data, so Canadian and Mexican carriers are covered through Cirium only. Pandemic years 2020 and 2021 are omitted from trend comparisons. No figure on this page is a forecast.
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.
Flight Compensation Calculator:
Check if you are entitled to flight delay compensation in just 3 minutes.
