U.S. flight on-time statistics

Key findings

Standalone, citable statements from the BTS On-Time Performance extract. Free to reuse with attribution to PlainFlights.

• 38.3 million U.S. domestic flight segments are in this PlainFlights extract of Bureau of Transportation Statistics On-Time Performance records (382 airports, 18 reporting carriers, 4,927 routes). Every Key Finding below is recomputed from those tables on each request, not typed in by hand.
• 79% of those segments arrived less than 15 minutes after schedule, the BTS on-time definition. 18.8% arrived late and 2.2% were cancelled (852,514 cancellations). These shares are the airline_monthly segment totals, not an airport-sum (that sum would double-count each flight).
• 89.8% to 73.7% is the on-time range across 18 reporting carriers with at least 1,000 tracked segments (16.1 points). ExpressJet Airlines (EV) sits at the top on 52,135 segments, a thinner sample than the cohort median of 1,300,525, so the rate has more room to move than a high-volume carrier's. Frontier Airlines sits at 73.7%. This is a historical average, not a recommendation to book.
• 7,582,834 segments were reported by Southwest Airlines, 19.8% of the extract. Volume is a size field, not an on-time grade (80.4% on-time on that carrier).
• 3,758,561 airport operations are recorded at Atlanta, GA (ATL), the largest total in the airports table. Airport operation counts include both departures and arrivals, so they are not the same unit as the 38.3 million unique segments above. ATL on-time rate in this extract: 83.7%.
• 94.8% on-time is the high among 369 airports with at least 1,000 tracked operations (SPN, Saipan). The low in that same floor is 68.6% (BQN, Aguadilla). Small airports can sit at either extreme; the 1,000-operation floor is the same cutoff the rankings pages use.
• 63,553 segments flew LAX to SFO (Los Angeles to San Francisco), the busiest directional pair in this extract (78.7% on-time). The return SFO to LAX recorded 63,540 segments at 82.9% on-time.
• 85.8% on-time is the high among 47 states and territories with at least 100,000 tracked flights (Idaho and Utah). Puerto Rico sits at 75.6% in that same volume floor. Tiny jurisdictions below the floor are omitted so a few hundred flights cannot set the national picture.

Reporting-carrier on-time rates

On-time arrival share by reporting carrier (minimum 1,000 tracked segments). A rate is not a recommendation to book.

Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics Airline On-Time Performance (Reporting Carrier) · 2026 Rates are the reporting-carrier table in this extract, not a census of every U.S. operator.