World’s Most Punctual Airlines in 2025 Revealed; Indigo Secures Spot On Global List, Here's Why

New Delhi: After a year that was full of airspace restrictions due to geopolitical tensions among nations and occasional labour shortages, aviation analytics leader Cirium has released its highly anticipated 2025 On-Time Performance Review.

The report, which serves as a step to estimate operational performance, has named new champions, and what comes as a surprise in the list is the name of an Indian airline that recently faced major operational disruption, leading to declining popularity for some time.

Timely takeoffs and landings are something that all travellers cherish and agree upon, especially in the wake of the IndiGo fiasco that caused cancellations and delays of multiple flights and caused a lot of inconvenience to travellers, especially in India. 

Every day, every hour, several planes take off all around the world in the midst of a geopolitical environment characterised by crew shortages, airspace restrictions, and other aviation difficulties. 

The rankings of the airlines as per the report:

The Leaderboard

While many older airlines struggled to get back to normal after the COVID-19 pandemic, a few became experts at being on time.

1. Top Winner 

Qatar Airways won the highest award for its great performance. Although they fly almost 200,000 flights worldwide, about 84% of them arrive exactly on time.

2. The World Leader 

For the second year, Aeromexico was the most punctual airline in the world. An amazing 90% of their flights were on time, beating almost everyone else.

3. Biggest Improvement

Virgin Atlantic was named the "Most Improved" because they raised their on-time score from 74% to over 83% in just two years.

4. Others

With 83.12% punctuality on 116,268 flights, Philippine Airlines led the Asia-Pacific area. 

With 80.9% punctuality on over 1.8 million flights, Delta Air Lines was the most punctual airline in North America. 

With 88.94% on-time performance across 37,119 flights, Iberia Express was named Europe's most punctual airline for the third consecutive year. 

Copa Airlines was the most punctual airline in Latin America, averaging 90.75 per cent on 133,748 flights.  

FlySafair recorded 91.06% punctuality on 62,805 flights, making it the most punctual airline in the Middle East and Africa category.

Surprisingly, IndiGo Airlines Finds Mention on the List

IndiGo is one of Asia-Pacific's top ten punctual airlines. Sixth place on the list went to IndiGo. According to data, the airline operated 802,418 flights in 2025 with an on-time arrival rate of 78.12%. 

Despite widespread flight cancellations amid operational challenges in December 2025, the report shows that IndiGo was actually very reliable (over 80%) for most of the year. 

Airport Winner

Punctuality isn’t just about the planes; it’s about the impact they leave behind. For airports, the criterion is On-Time Departure.

Istanbul Airport (IST) is the Airport Platinum Winner. 2025 was a landmark year for the Turkish hub; in April, it became Europe’s first airport to implement triple independent parallel runway operations. 

This innovation allowed it to set a record on July 2, 2025, by handling 81 departures in a single hour.

Despite the difficulties associated with aviation, some airports have earned a reputation for being on schedule.

To maintain strict standards, Cirium defines an On-Time Arrival as an aircraft reaching the gate within 15 minutes of its scheduled time. For airports, the same 15-minute grace period applies to the departure from the gate.

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