U.S. airlines reported lackluster on-time performance during the peak holiday travel rush. In December, major carriers and their regional counterparts canceled nearly 6,000 flights, roughly double the 3,000 in December 2023.
Between Dec. 19 and Jan. 2, the Transportation Security Administration said it screened a record 39 million individuals. This marks the busiest-ever end-of-year travel season.
Battered by weather and a brief IT glitch at one carrier, many airlines struggled to keep flights operating as scheduled.
Of the three major U.S. carriers, Delta had the best on-time figures in December. According to OAG data, the Atlanta-based airline canceled 0.35% of its planned flights.
United canceled 0.86% while American topped the list at 1.02% or 1,861 scrubbed flights. These figures measure all flights marketed by these carriers, including regional service.
In terms of overall on-time performance, Delta again leads with a score of nearly 80%.
OAG defines on-time performance as “the percentage of flights that have arrived on schedule. A flight is considered on-time if it has arrived within 15 minutes of the schedule.” This also includes cancellations, the firm says.
United took the No. 2 spot at 79.27%. American fell to 76.9%, far below its 2023 figure of 84%.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, several of American’s flights were grounded due to an IT issue. While the outage lasted only a few hours, disruptions compounded throughout the day.
In addition, the Fort Worth, Texas-based airline faced numerous days of thunderstorms at its Dallas/Fort Worth hub.
Southwest – also hit with weather in the DFW Metroplex – saw a slight improvement in its year-over-year cancellation rate. The airline canceled 0.48% of its planned flights in December 2024, an increase from 0.61% during the same period in 2023.
Both Spirit and Southwest had some of the better on-time percentage rates at 77.48% and 79.26%, respectively.
On-time performance for marketing U.S. carriers in December 2024 (Data: OAG)
Allegiant and Sun Country had some of the lowest on-time percentage rates at 72.64% and 64.27%, respectively. Out of all the marketing U.S. carriers, Breeze had the worst on-time performance score at 57.35%.
The average cancellation rate for U.S. carriers was nearly 1% in December 2024, which was 0.15% more than in 2023. But some airlines stuck out with better-than-average performance.
Avelo was the only airline to cancel zero flights in the U.S. Sun Country canceled just two.
Finally, Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance figure at 84.52%.
