PlainFlights

Best Time to Fly

Find the best month to depart from any U.S. airport. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), on-time rates swing sharply by season - winter storms and summer thunderstorms drive most weather delays. This tool ranks every month best to worst using 38.3 million flights of BTS On-Time Performance data from 2020 to 2025. See our methodology for how on-time performance is measured.

These are historical BTS averages for the airport as a whole, not a prediction for any specific flight. Which routes and airlines fly in a given month can shift the numbers independent of the season itself.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the Best Time to Fly tool work? ▼
Select an airport to see monthly on-time departure rates ranked from best to worst. Data is aggregated across multiple years (2020-2025) to show seasonal patterns.
What data is used? ▼
We analyze 38.3 million flight segments from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) On-Time Performance dataset, covering 382 US airports from 2020 to 2024.
How is "on-time" defined? ▼
A flight is considered on-time if it departs less than 15 minutes after its scheduled departure time, per the Bureau of Transportation Statistics definition.
Data Source: Bureau of Transportation Statistics, On-Time Performance Data (2020–2025). 38.3 million flight segments analyzed across 382 US airports.

Every figure on PlainFlights is rendered directly from BTS On-Time Performance data, no number is typed in by an editor. This tool queries the selected airport's day-of-week on-time history live from the dataset; it is a historical average, not a prediction for any specific flight. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.