FlightGlobal Incorporating FlightStats announces winners of 9th Annual Airline On-Time Performance Service Awards

The winners of the FlightGlobal Incorporating FlightStats On-time Performance Service (OPS) Awards were announced earlier this week, identifying Delta as the most on-time global airline and Iberia as the most on-time global airline network.

As a leader in aviation and air travel data services, FlightGlobal is in a unique position to be able to provide an in-depth view of how airlines are performing globally. The company curates Flight status – scheduled and actual gate arrival times – in real-time from over 90 percent of scheduled passenger flights flown by the top 250 airlines worldwide. The ratings for the OPS Awards are calculated from the tracking of over 36 million flights or about 99,000 flights per day.

The categories for OPS awards are grouped into three areas: Global, Major(by region), and Low-Cost Carriers. Each category is split into mainline and network – the system of flights marketed by an airline and operated by them and their airline partners.

The winners are based on comprehensive analysis of corroborated flight status and arrival data from over 600 global sources across airline direct operational data feeds, airline data via the world’s largest Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), civil aviation authorities, airports, positional data feeds and other third-party aggregators.

“Through our data science and industry expertise, we have set a data standard for airlines to review and refine their operations accurately – providing travelers information on airlines they can trust,” said Jim Hetzel, vice president, aviation & distribution, FlightGlobal. “The quality of our data means the winning airlines of our awards are the best in the world – a title to be proud of.”

The on-time metric is determined by a flight arriving at its gate within 14 minutes of the scheduled arrival time (in the industry, known as A14). Major airlines benchmark their market position every month with an interactive on-time performance report – and the awards are based on a collation the data from across the whole year.

This year, Delta became the first US-based airline to win the global airline category in the 9th Annual Airline OPS Awards. Delta has shown a strong performance in 2017, achieving an 85.9 on-time percentage. During a 9-day period in November, including the US Thanksgiving holiday, FlightGlobal’s data shows that the airline cancelled only one of 23,485 flights.

Iberia’s global airline network achieved an on-time percentage of 88.9.

The winners across the seven award categories include:

• Global Major Mainline Winner: Delta Air Lines
• Global Major Network Winner: Iberia
• North American Major Mainline and Network Winner: Delta Air Lines
• European Major Mainline and Network Winner: Iberia
• Middle East & Africa Major Mainline Winner: Qatar Airways
• Asia-Pacific Major Mainline and Network Winner: Japan Airlines
• Latin American Major Mainline and Network Winner: Copa Airlines
• Low-cost Carrier Winner: Iberia Express

A full list of the results and winners can be viewed here

Click here to read more about the awards.