If the latest round of airline delays over the holiday season has you feeling anxious about your next flight, the 2024 annual on-time performance list from Cirium, published on Jan. 2, may help. The aviation analytics firm analyzes more than 25m data points from 600-plus sources each day to determine whether airlines are meeting their scheduled arrival times. A flight is considered punctual if it arrives within 14 minutes and 59 seconds of its scheduled landing time. Only air carriers that exceed a threshold of operational size and regional diversity are eligible for the global rankings. After conducting a review of how its data added up over the course of 2024, Cirium’s most on-time airline in 2024—with 86.7% of flights arriving on time—is Aeromexico. For the Mexico City-based carrier, that number represents a 9% improvement from the year prior: “an astronomical rise,” as Cirium put it during a press conference. The accolade caps off a turnaround story that started in 2022 when Grupo Aeromexico SAB de CV emerged from bankruptcy. In the two years since, it’s “relentlessly” invested in technological upgrades to improve on-time records and increased profits, says Mike Malik, chief marketing officer at Cirium. Amid all the momentum, Aeromexico filed for an initial public offering in the US in May 2024, seeking to raise as much as $500m. Following in second place in Cirium’s list is Jeddah-based Saudi Arabian Airlines (better known as Saudia), with an 86.35% on-time performance. Delta Air Lines Inc. came in third place, at 83.46%, in spite of the CrowdStrike software malfunction that led to a global ground stop in July. The airline was slower to recover than its competitors, canceling approximately 7,000 flights over subsequent days.<br/>
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Dublin to London Heathrow was the second busiest international air route operated within Europe last year, according to figures compiled by aviation data consultancy OAG. The route had some 2.35m seats last year, placing it behind Rome Fiumicino to Madrid, with 2.41m seats. Flights between the two airports were operated by Aer Lingus and British Airways last year, although there was disruption to schedules due to strikes by Aer Lingus pilots last summer. The busiest domestic route in Europe was Barcelona to Palma with just under 2.9m seats while the busiest route from Europe to a destination outside the region was Heathrow to New York with just more than 4m seats (ranking it tenth in the overall global ranking). The busiest international airline route in 2024 was Hong Kong to Taipei in Taiwan, with 6.8m seats, OAG said. Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Singapore Changi had topped the ranking in 2023 but slipped to fourth place last year with just under 5.4m seats.<br/>
Thick smog engulfed the Indian capital on Friday, prompting warnings of possible flight disruptions from airport and airline officials, as worsening air quality cut visibility to zero in some areas. Delhi, which has been battling smog and poor air quality since the beginning of winter, ranked third among the world's most polluted capitals in Friday's live rankings by Swiss group IQAir. No diversion or cancellation has been reported yet, an airport spokesperson said, although authorities warned in a post on X that aircraft lacking equipment to enable landings in low visibility could face difficulties. On social media, India's largest airline IndiGo and low-cost carrier Spicejet also cautioned against weather delays. Delays averaged eight minutes for 20 flights by 10:14 a.m., aviation website FlightRadar24 said.<br/>
Chinese authorities have called for assessments of industry hazards to uncover any "hidden" operational dangers from flight routes to runways, following the deadliest year in global commercial aviation since 2018.<br/>Last year, 318 people died in commercial flight incidents around the world, according to data tracked by the U.S.-headquartered Flight Safety Foundation's Aviation Safety Network. The last time fatalities exceeded 300 was in 2018. On Friday, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said it had been alerting Chinese airlines to potential safety threats and adjusting flight routes. "The Civil Aviation Administration of China has been... in a timely manner warning airlines of safety risks to flights, and adjusting route plans to ensure safe operation," Shu Mingjiang, a CAAC official, said at a regular press briefing. On Dec. 29, a Jeju Air jet flying from Thailand to South Korea belly-landed and overshot the runway in Muan following a bird strike. The Boeing 737-800 plane exploded into flames after hitting an embankment, killing 179 people. That was preceded by the crash of an Azerbaijan Airlines flight near the city of Aktau in Kazakhstan after diverting from southern Russia where Ukrainian drones were attacking several cities at the time. Azerbaijan's president said the plane had been damaged by accidental shooting from the ground in Russia. Chinese carriers including Air China and China Southern Airlines have started to avoid airspace in that region, financial and investigative news outlet Caixin reported. Most Western airlines and many in Asia have avoided Russian airspace entirely since 2022 due to the Russia-Ukraine war.<br/>
South Korea's transport ministry has extended special inspections of all 101 of the Boeing 737-800 jets run by the country's airlines by a week, after the worst aviation disaster on the country's soil, a ministry official said on Friday. The ministry launched the inspections following Sunday's crash of a Boeing 737-800 operated by Jeju Air that killed 179 people. The inspections were supposed to be completed on Friday but were extended to Jan. 10, the official told Reuters, without elaborating on the reason. The Jeju Air flight from Bangkok to Muan county in southwestern South Korea belly-landed and overshot the regional airport's runway, exploding into flames after hitting an embankment. The ministry has said it would look at engines, maintenance records and landing gear on all 737-800s, and an airline's operations could be suspended for serious violations. The transport ministry also held an emergency meeting with chief executives of 11 airlines, including top-ranked Korean Air Lines and Asiana Airlines, to discuss measures to enhance aviation safety, the ministry official said. South Korea's investigation team said on Friday two of its members would leave for the United States next week to analyse the flight data recorder of the crash in cooperation with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The team is also studying the plane wreckage and interviewing airport control tower officials. Investigators will analyse data on 107 mobile phones recovered from the crash site, including text messages, for clues on what happened leading up to the crash, Yonhap News said.<br/>
More than one in four flights operated by major Australian airlines in 2024 arrived at their destinations late, with local punctuality rates lagging significantly behind average carriers in comparable countries. Experts say a lack of competition in Australia’s airline market is a likely factor behind the prevalence of delays, and that the Albanese government missed a golden opportunity to nudge local carriers into performing better when it decided to omit a cash compensation scheme for delayed and cancelled flights from its landmark aviation reforms. Global data collated by aviation analytics firm Cirium, released on Thursday, found that Australia’s three major airlines – Qantas, budget subsidiary Jetstar and Virgin Australia – recorded on-time performance rates of 73.85%, 73.39% and 72.70% respectively. The on-time performance rates – which measure the share of an airline’s flights that land at their destination within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival time – lay bare how frequently Australian passengers are hit with delays compared with foreign carriers. Among global airlines, Aeromexico – Mexico’s flag carrier – had the highest on-time performance in 2024 with 86.70%, followed by Saudia at 86.35%, Delta Air Lines at 83.46%, Latam at 82.89% and Qatar Airways at 82.83%.<br/>
Airbus fell just short of meeting its annual delivery target for 2024 by handing over about 760 aircraft to customers following a last-month spurt that helped the company overcome a slow start to the year. Deliveries in December alone came close to 120, according to people familiar with the numbers, who cautioned that the final tally may differ slightly. The company is set to reveal its official orders and deliveries for 2024 on Jan. 9, though stock-market regulation would have required Airbus to disclose publicly if it had fallen materially short of its 770-unit goal. A spokesman for Airbus declined to comment. The December rush marks a turnaround for the company after struggling for months to ramp up output because of bottlenecks in the supply chain. Airbus had set out the year with a goal of delivering 800 aircraft in 2024 and was forced to pare back the target in June because of missing parts. Airbus hasn’t issued a new goal yet for planned deliveries this year, a closely watched metric that provides investors with a monthly progress report on the health of the commercial aviation industry. Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence estimate Airbus will hand over 869 aircraft in 2025.<br/>
Paper boarding passes will become a thing of the past by the end of the decade, according to the boss of the biggest new airline to launch this century. Tony Douglas, the CE of Riyadh Air, predicted that even phone-based boarding passes would all but disappear by 2030 to be replaced by biometric scans, such as fingerprints, faces and irises. Apps would also become the sole booking option, he predicted. Physical plane tickets and boarding passes have been in decline since the turn of the millennium as airlines have moved towards digital alternatives. However, paper still persists. Michael O’Leary, the boss of Ryanair, said in October that he hoped to eradicate paper-based boarding passes by May 2025. He said: “We are working towards, from May 1, that everything will be done on the app, nothing will be done on paper any more.” It means people who do not have a smartphone will be unable to board a Ryanair flight next spring, a potentially controversial change. Riyadh Air will become the first airline in the world to adopt a digital-only approach that is entirely divorced from conventional booking systems when it begins flying next year. Story has more.<br/>