Canadian airlines with weak punctuality despite improvements

In the competitive arena of North American aviation, Air Canada and WestJet lag behind in punctuality, despite a remarkable improvement in 2024. According to Cirium's annual report on global airline punctuality, the two largest Canadian airlines remain at the bottom among the major North American airlines. Air Canada reached second-to-last place among the ten largest airlines in North America with 71 percent on-time landings on almost 386,000 flights in 2024. This represents an improvement over the previous year, when only 63 percent of approximately 376,000 flights landed on time. However, these advances were not enough to surpass airlines like Frontier Airlines and JetBlue, which showed higher punctuality rates. WestJet also managed to improve its punctuality rate to 71 percent on around 192,000 flights. However, the airline fell from seventh place the previous year to last place, as many North American airlines also improved their timeliness. In 2023, WestJet achieved a punctuality rate of 69 percent on more than 182,000 flights. At the top of the punctuality charts, Delta Air Lines continues to reign with an impressive 83 percent on-time landings on 1.7 million flights, followed by United Airlines and Alaska Airlines. Another focus of the Cirium report was on flight cancellations, with Air Canada recording the fourth-highest number of cancellations, while WestJet ranked seventh among North American airlines. Overall, the Canadians show improvements but still remain below the North American average.