Flightright is one of Europe's leading providers of compensation for passengers affected by flight disruptions. In the event of flight delays, cancellations or denied boarding, Flightright relies on the application of European Union regulation 261/2004 to enable passengers to obtain compensation and/or reimbursement from the airlines. Flightright has already obtained more than 430 million in compensation for its customers..
Thanks to this visibility, the company publishes several times a year an index of the most reliable airlines, both operationally and in terms of their diligence in reimbursing passengers in the event of problems. Flightright has just revealed Europe's best and worst airlines for flight delays and cancellations.
The Flightright examined delays of more than 15 minutes and flight cancellations for airlines operating in Europe between 1er January and 13 December 2024. The European carrier with the most delays over the period in question is, according to Flightright, Tap Air Portugal. The carrier displays a rate of 32.1 % on 109,507 frequencies, i.e. around one flight in three.
In second and third place were Jet 2 and easyJet, with delays of 29.54 % and 28.93 % respectively. For its part, Air France in eighth placea mediocre performance, but one that is still much better than those posted by British Airways, Swiss or ITA. Air France recorded 23.48 % in delays. out of 258,643 flights operated. The best-performing airlines out of a total of 20 European carriers were Wizz Air, SAS and Aer Lingus.
Traditional airlines, champions of cancellations
More worrying is the ranking of European airlines which cancel flights. Admittedly, the percentage seems low, since it is less than 3% of all the flights of each airline. But calculated in terms of the number of flights, this is an impressive figure. Judge for yourself: Lufthansa takes first place among the cancellations of companies. Flightright has listed almost 12,900 cancellationsThese cancellations concerned almost 458,500 flights. This means an average of more than 40 cancelled flights every day for the German carrier.
Follows immediately British Airways with 2.14% of cancellations for a total of 6,200 flights. KLM ranks third in terms of the percentage of flights cancelled, at 1.67%. This translates into the 'disappearance' of 3,842 flights. However, this is less thaneasyJet whose cancellations affected 5,600 flights (i.e. 1.03% of its total programme). Air France back in eighth place, lhe national carrier having cancelled 1.16% of its flights according to Flightright, or just over 3,000 flights.
The best performers in the Flightright top 20 are Greece's Aegean Airlines, Turkish Airlines and Wizz Air Malta.. The first cancelled only 0.34% of its frequencies, the second and third 0.29%. Ryanair does even better. It ranked 21st with only 0.17% of cancelled flights…
