Flight delay and cancellation statistics

Airline on-time rates, 2025 vs 2024

Share of each marketing carrier's flights that arrived on time under DOT's definition, full year, ranked by 2025 performance. Every airline except Spirit and Frontier got worse year over year — 2025 was a system-wide slide, not a few bad carriers.

• Marketing-carrier basis: each network's figure includes its regional partners flying under its brand.
• Alaska and Hawaiian merged onto one FAA certificate in October 2025 but still report separately. Spirit ceased operations in May 2026 — its rows are historical.

Flight cancellation rate by year, 2019–2025

Share of scheduled U.S. flights that were cancelled, systemwide. The trend since the pandemic had been improving — 2023 was the best year in over a decade — but 2025 broke the streak.

2025's 1.53% works out to 118,168 cancelled flights out of 7,736,770 scheduled. If your flight is among them, know your options — see what airlines owe you for delays and cancellations.

Most and least delayed major airports, 2025

The 30 largest U.S. airports ranked by on-time arrival rate for full-year 2025, worst first. The bottom of the table is dominated by the congested Northeast corridor — Washington Reagan (DCA), Newark (EWR), and LaGuardia (LGA) — while Salt Lake City (SLC) is the most reliable big airport in the country.

A note on reading this table: BTS publishes on-time percentages, not "percent delayed." The delayed share is not simply 100 minus the on-time rate, because cancelled and diverted flights are tracked separately.

Why flights are late: delay causes

BTS attributes every minute of delay to a cause. The 2023 breakdown — the latest full published table — shows most delays trace back to the airlines' own operations, not the weather on your departure day:

Two things stand out. First, "late-arriving aircraft" — your plane showing up late from its previous flight — is the single biggest cause at 40.0%, which is why one morning disruption cascades all day. Second, weather's real footprint is larger than the 5.2% "extreme weather" line: BTS's combined methodology, which also counts weather hiding inside system and late-aircraft delays, attributes 32.3% of all 2025 delay minutes to weather, versus 27.8% in 2024. For practical tactics — book the first flight out, avoid tight connections — see how to avoid flight delays.

The worst disruptions on record

Averages hide the meltdowns. Four recent disruptions show how bad a bad stretch can get:

• Southwest's holiday meltdown (Dec 2022). December 2022 alone saw 5.4% of all U.S. flights cancelled, and 54.5% of those were attributed to Southwest — 14,042 flights between December 24 and 31. It pushed the full-year 2022 cancellation rate to 2.71%.
• The Delta / CrowdStrike outage (Jul 2024). A faulty software update grounded Delta for days: roughly 7,000 flights cancelled over five days (July 19–25, 2024), affecting about 1.3 million passengers — 2024's worst single-carrier disruption.
• The shutdown flight cuts (Nov 2025). During the government shutdown, the FAA ordered flight reductions at 40 high-volume airports — phasing from 4% toward 10% — from November 7–17, 2025, affecting roughly 3,500–4,000 flights per day. It was 2025's worst system-wide disruption.
• The long-tarmac-delay creep. In 2024 there were 437 domestic tarmac delays over 3 hours and 61 international delays over 4 hours, up from 289 and 35 in 2023 — and U.S. PIRG's analysis found domestic 3-hour tarmac delays rose another 63% in 2025.

If you're caught in one, the playbook is the same: what to do when your flight is delayed covers rebooking, refunds, and your rights step by step.

A delayed flight compresses your security window

Here's the connection most delay statistics miss: a delay or a rebooked flight usually means a new departure time you didn't plan around — often at a busier hour of the security day. One in nine 2025 flights ran 45+ minutes late, and rebooked passengers pile into whatever departure bank has seats, lengthening checkpoint lines exactly when you can least afford them. Before you head back to the airport, check the current security wait in our TSA wait times study or get a live Leave-By Time for your new departure.

What percentage of flights are on time?

In 2025, 76.42% of U.S. domestic flights arrived on time under DOT's definition — the worst full-year result since 2014, down from 78.1% in 2024. Roughly 1 in 12 non-cancelled 2025 flights arrived 60 or more minutes late, and 1 in 9 arrived 45 or more minutes late, per a U.S. PIRG analysis of the same federal data.

What percentage of flights get cancelled?

1.53% of scheduled U.S. flights were cancelled in 2025 — 118,168 of 7,736,770 scheduled flights. That's up from 1.36% in 2024 and well above 2023's 1.29%, the lowest systemwide rate in over a decade. The outlier years remain 2020 (5.99%, the pandemic) and 2022 (2.71%, driven partly by Southwest's December meltdown).

Which airline is most on time?

Hawaiian Airlines led U.S. carriers in 2025 with 81.95% of flights arriving on time, followed by the Delta network at 79.26% and Southwest at 77.76%. Frontier finished last at 70.68%. Hawaiian and Delta also took the top two spots in 2024, so the order at the top has been stable.

What is the most delayed airport in the US?

Washington Reagan National (DCA) had the worst on-time arrival rate among the 30 largest U.S. airports in 2025, at 68.3%, followed by Newark (70.0%) and New York LaGuardia (71.75%). Salt Lake City was the most reliable at 84.32%. The pattern is consistent: congested Northeast-corridor airspace produces the worst numbers.

What causes most flight delays?

By share of total delay minutes (2023, the latest published breakdown), late-arriving aircraft caused 40.0% of delays, problems within the airline's control 36.4%, the national aviation system 18.1%, extreme weather 5.2%, and security just 0.2%. Weather's true footprint is bigger than the extreme-weather line suggests — BTS's combined methodology attributes 32.3% of all 2025 delay minutes to weather in some form.

Cite or share this data

The tables and figures on this page are free to republish under CC BY 4.0 — copy any table, chart, or statistic with a link back to this page. Suggested citation:

Source: tsawaittimes.app — Flight delay and cancellation statistics, 2026

For broader context — passengers per day, TSA throughput, and more — see our air travel statistics hub.