Air Canada and WestJet are the dunces of punctuality in North America, according to a ranking of airline punctuality in 2022 by Cirium, which analyzes the aviation sector.
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The two largest airlines in Canada are thus respectively in tenth and ninth place in this ranking released on Tuesday.
Air Canada reported on-time arrivals, meaning a flight arriving within 15 minutes of the scheduled time, for approximately 54.51% of its 150,602 flights. This percentage reaches 59.10% for 94,663 flights for WestJet.
For a second consecutive year, Delta Air Lines (83.63%; 1,004,684 flights) was the most punctual airline in North America.
In Europe, the airline Iberia (85.87%; 91,154) leads the pack, while Polish Airlines is dead last (75.08%; 85,902). On a global scale, the American company Azul Airlines was named the world leader in airline punctuality in 2022 by Cirium (88.93%; 279,722).
The Cirium report highlights that in 2022, airlines “struggled to anticipate the sudden recovery in demand”.
“They had been disappointed on several occasions during the pandemic: while demand seemed to increase, it ended up reversing its trajectory in the face of new variants of COVID. When the recovery finally came last year, the industry […] had to deal with understaffing and insufficient capacity. Delays and cancellations have become problematic”, can we also read.
The data firm, however, believes that 2023 will be a “very promising” year for the aviation industry.
