Cirium: N. American Carriers Show On-Time Recovery in August

The August average on-time performance for North American carriers recovered after the challenges in July from the CrowdStrike and Microsoft IT outage, increasing 2.7 percentage points to 71.5 percent, according to aviation analytics company Cirium. 

Delta Air Lines regained its first-place position with an on-time performance average of 80.9 percent, 8.5 percentage points higher than its July average. United Airlines remained in second at 78.4 percent, a 5.3 percentage-point gain. Southwest Airlines took third with an 8.7 percentage-point increase to 78.2 percent. 

All but three of the 10 carriers tracked showed gains. The exceptions were JetBlue, which dropped 5.3 percentage points to 64.3 percent; Air Canada, which was down 4.4 percentage points to 61.1 percent; and Alaska Airlines, which lost 0.9 percentage points to 76.6 percent.

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Delta and United each made the global list of top performing airlines for August at sixth and eighth place, respectively.

With the recovery from the IT outage came an improvement in canceled flights for August. North American carriers canceled nearly 17,800 flights for the month, compared with nearly 23,400 in July.

Southwest for a second consecutive month had the highest completion factor rate at 99.3 percent, followed by Alaska at 99.2 percent and Delta at 98.2 percent.

A flight is considered on time if the aircraft arrives at the gate within 15 minutes of its scheduled arrival time.

 Cirium: IT Outage Caused 'Notable' Decline in July Air On-Time Performance