Airline on-time performance for North American carriers increased for the third month in a row, but the rate of increase eased a bit, according to Cirium’s latest monthly report. On-time percentage in October increased 2.8 percentage points to 80.1% compared with September’s 5.5 percentage-point increase to 77.3%.

All but two qualifying carriers showed month-over-month improvement: Southwest remained the same at 78.4%, and WestJet dropped 5.2 percentage points to 71.3%, one month after it was the carrier with the largest improvement.

JetBlue showed the most improvement during the month, with a 9.9 percentage-point increase to 74.4%. The carrier, along with Air Canada, moved above the 70% line as well, after performing below that level in September.
Delta retained its first-place ranking with a 90.8% on-time performance, the first time a carrier has been above 90% since at least January 2022. United Airlines was second with 86.3%, followed by Alaska Airlines with 86.1%.

Delta also topped the global on-time performance list, while United was fourth and American Airlines was sixth with 85.5%.

North American airlines in October canceled 4,656 flights, a 52.7% decrease from September. Each of the top five North American carriers in the rankings had a completion factor above 99%, led by Delta at nearly100% (99.85%).