For the second straight month, Southwest Airlines ranked first in on-time performance (OTP) among North American carriers, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics provider. Southwest had an OTP of 82.3% during the month, down 1 percentage point from January. Spirit Airlines finished close behind at 81.8% in February.
Delta Air Lines had ranked first in 15 of the 16 months prior to January, with the exception of July 2024, due to the CrowdStrike IT outage. In February, it stood in third place at 80.6%, down half a percentage point from January.
The two Canadian carriers in Cirium’s North American rankings, Air Canada and WestJet, saw their OTP plunging in February because of a series of winter storms that affected much of the country. Air Canada’s February on-time performance dropped to 60% from 68.8% in January, while WestJet’s dropped to 58.3% from 72.9%.
On the whole, February OTP for North American airlines was 74.7%, down from 77.9% the month before and dragged down substantially by the Canadian carriers.
