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6 Jan, 2016

FREE DOWNLOAD: OAG report on world’s most punctual airlines and airports, 2015

CHICAGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–OAG, the global leader in air travel intelligence, has released the results of the OAG Punctuality League 2015, the industry’s most comprehensive annual ranking of on-time performance (OTP) for the world’s airlines and airports. For the first time, this year’s league table incorporates enhanced depth and coverage from the newly consolidated flight status and day of travel database, OAG flightview.

“Measuring and reporting on the OTP of airlines and airports has the power to affect positive change in the future of aviation. The benchmarking tool is a powerful key performance indicator and a potential service differentiator for marketing products to travelers,” said John Grant, senior analyst at OAG. “While overall OTP in North America is largely unchanged as compared to 2014, several of the low-cost carriers are clearly placing an emphasis on OTP, as seen by Southwest and JetBlue’s inclusion in the Top 10 North American Airlines category.”

Low-cost carriers (LCC) across the globe saw significant OTP boosts in 2015. In 2014, the 20th best LCC boasted an OTP of just 58.3 percent, while this year that number soared to 74.7 percent. JetBlue was affected by the overall performance of this category, as its ranking dropped from 14th to 18th among the top 20 LCC airlines, despite its OTP actually improving to 78.3 percent.

The three largest carriers in the U.S. all ranked among the top 10 in North America, with Delta leading the pack at 84.5 percent (4th), American Airlines at 80.1 percent (7th), and United Airlines finishing at 79 percent (9th).

As for the performance of airports, each airport category featured a new leader as compared with 2014, and overall airport performance rose in 2015.

In North America, Chicago O’Hare (ORD) finished among the most improved airports across the globe. ORD jumped from 71.4 percent to 78.3 percent becoming the eighth most-improved airport in the world. With a fifth runway expected in the coming year, ORD is positioned to experience further improvement in this category in 2016.

Major hub airports demonstrated the difficulty associated with consistently staying on schedule at such a large scale. The top 20 Megahub airports – defined by the airports that offer the highest levels of connectivity – all finished with an OTP between 78 and 88 percent. These Megahubs are more dependent on the performance of arrivals into the hub and more likely to experience the cascading effect of delays.

From a database of more than 50 million flight records, and incorporating data from OAG’s flightview flight status database, OAG produces the annual benchmarking report for the OTP of Top Airports (Small; Medium; Large), Top Airlines (Mainline; Low-Cost Carriers, or “LCCs”) and Airlines by Region (Europe Middle East & Africa or “EMEA”; China; Asia Pacific; The Americas). For 2015, OAG has introduced new categories for Most Improved Airports and Airlines, Top Meetings and Conventions Cities and also benchmarks OAG’s Megahubs.

OAG’s flight status and day-of-travel products solutions now sit under a newly-launched product brand, “OAG flightview.” This year’s Punctuality League has been compiled using the power of two market-leading databases, now consolidated, to offer customers even more accuracy and coverage than ever before.

For more insights from the OAG Punctuality League 2015, download a copy of the full report.