Icelandair retains position as Europe’s most punctual airline

Icelandair has topped Europe’s punctuality charts for the second month running, achieving an 81.4% on-time performance in July, according to Cirium, while rising flight cancellations highlight ongoing challenges across the continent and beyond

Icelandair has been named Europe’s most punctual airline for the second consecutive month, according to the latest monthly figures.

Aviation analyst Cirium said the Nordic carrier achieved an on-time performance (OTP) rate of 81.4% in July – a drop of 4% on June.

Cirium bases OTP rates on flights that arrive at destination airports within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time.

Figures show that SAS was the second-best European performer with an OTP of 81%, followed by Turkish Airlines (77.2%), Finnair (75%) and Iberia (75%). No UK airline was featured in the top 10.

Globally, Aeromexico took the top spot with an OTP of 89.81%, followed closely by Azul with 87.85%.

Saudia achieved a punctuality score of 87.57%, while Qatar Airways and LATAM Airlines took the fourth and fifth spots with 85.79% and 82.08% of flights on-time respectively

The statistics also show how flight cancellations across Europe increased by 29.51% in June, with 10,640 cancelled flights compared to 8,215 in June.

In the U.S, July’s cancellations rose by almost 42% to 20,000 flights.

Only one European airport featured in Cirium’s list of the top 20 most on-time large airports. Oslo in Norway was ranked in 18th place with an OTP of 80.6%. The top two major airports for punctuality globally were Bengaluru Kempegowda International Airport and Chennai International.


Photo: MarcelX42/Wikipedia