Photo: Gorodenkoff (Shutterstock)
In our hurry to find the cheapest flight possible, there’s a crucial travel detail that many of us don’t stop to consider: how often a flight is severely delayed. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to check a flight’s success rate of on-time travel before buying your ticket. The U.S. Department of Transportation requires major U.S. airlines to disclose their on-time performance percentage for flights—both on the airline’s website and over the phone by request. Those two options might be a bit too impractical while you’re shopping for flights, but there’s an easier solution, too.
What flight numbers mean
Flight numbers mean a lot more than just arbitrary alphanumeric numbers. As explained by The Points Guy:
In many cases, those flight numbers repeat daily; flight 100 on American Airlines always goes between JFK and London Heathrow seven days a week, while 101 runs the same route in reverse.
Flight numbers have a specific route they consistently take. Some routes for certain airlines might be more difficult than others, due to things like scheduling or thin worker hours. All that information gets recorded and sent to the Department of Transportation, who then packs it up every quarter in a nice report in the hopes you make take the time to make more informed decisions.
These are the airlines with the best on-time arrival rates for March 2023, for example:
Delta Airlines Network – 79.2%Alaska Airlines Network – 78.1%United Airlines Network – 76.9%And here are the worst ones:
Hawaiian Airlines – 59.5%Spirit Airlines – 64.0%Allegiant Air – 64.2%How to check your flight’s on-time performance percentage
Flightera has a tool that’s both quicker and more practical than searching for a flight’s on-time performance percentage on an airline’s website or waiting on hold to speak with customer service. Just type the airline’s flight number (without spaces) in the search bar and you’ll find a lot of basic information—real-time statuses, durations, distances, and so on—but the best piece of information is under “General Route Information,” where you can find “Punctuality.” You’ll see the on-time performance percentage, and you can expand the results as a timeline graph for more detail.
