Air transport began its recovery in April 2022 with the gradual reopening of borders, many experts had sounded the alarm about traffic management. This is because, with the pandemic, airports and airlines slimmed down their workforce due to the halt in activity. Whether through lack of foresight or over-optimism, the sector did not react as quickly to the resumption of traffic by hiring back. Or simply by retaining their staff.
Consequence: delays have multiplied, reaching catastrophic levels in the summer of 2022This is simply due to staff shortages. Delays are often linked to congestion on the ground: lost baggage, long queues at airports at the various control filters. But also to the shortage of pilots, which has led to numerous cancellations.
OAG has analysed punctuality performance based on the official definition of a OTP (On Time Performance). A flight arriving or departing within 15 minutes of the official timetable is considered to be on time.. In the OAG analysis, only arriving passenger flights were taken into account. Flight cancellations were also taken into account when calculating the OTP. The airlines for which OAG had at least timetable information for at least 80% of scheduled flights were also identified.
North America and Europe suffering
OAG notes that punctuality by region was worst in North America and Europe. This effectively confirms that the traffic congestion during the summer had a severe impact on the smooth running of the aviation business.
In North America, just over 70% of flights were on schedule, while in Europe this percentage was close to 74%. TheAfrica and the Middle East have reached a punctuality of 77.5% and those ofAsia-Pacific 79%. L'Latin America posted the best performance. The percentage of on-time airlines reached 81.2% in 2022.
By contrast, cancellations in North America have remained very low, with an average of just 0.03% of flights cancelled in 2022. In contrast, Asia-Pacific saw the highest rate of cancellations, at 4.2%. This situation is due to the very severe restrictions on aviation activity in China during Covid. This resulted in a large number of flights being cancelled. Europe saw the second highest number of cancellations after Asia-Pacific, with 1.27% of flights cancelled. Latin America, on the other hand, recorded a cancellation rate of 1.12%, while Africa/Middle East could be satisfied with a cancellation rate of just 0.89%.
By airline, Garuda Indonesia is the world's most punctual airline with an OTP of 95.6 %. However, OAG points out that this performance is linked to the very sharp reduction in the airline's activity, which has only operated 25% of its 2019 flight schedule. Out of the top 20 most punctual airlines, seven carriers are based in Asia, three in Europe and Africa/Middle East and one in North America, Delta Air Lines.
In Europe, it's low-cost Eurowings the continent's best performer with 95.26% of its flights per hour. It is followed by Iberia with 86.54% and Air Europa with 84.44%. Austrian ranks fourth with 81.05% of punctual flights, followed by ITA Airways with 79.59%.
On the other hand, with the exception of Iberia, the European mega-carriers are struggling: KLM has a punctuality of 73.06%, Air France 72.10%, Lufthansa only 66.26%, Turkish Airlines 64.08% and finally British Airways closes the pack with a punctuality of 64.07%. Not a surprising result if we remember the total saturation of airports and British skies last summer.
