About this site and how we calculate the numbers

Route Reliability shows how often flights on busy U.S. domestic routes arrived on time, were cancelled, were diverted or arrived an hour or more late, broken down by airline, month and departure hour. It answers questions like "which airline is most reliable from Newark to Orlando?" from official records rather than reviews or anecdotes.

It is not a live flight tracker. For the status of a flight today, check with your airline.

Data source

All figures come from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance (1987-present) database. U.S. airlines above a revenue threshold must report every scheduled domestic nonstop flight to the DOT, with scheduled and actual times, cancellations, diversions and delay causes. We download the monthly files and aggregate them ourselves.

• Current statistics: the 12 months September 2025 to August 2026 (7,049,869 scheduled flights).
• Best and worst months of the year: September 2023 to August 2026, pooled by calendar month (36 months).
• Data through: August 2026. BTS publishes each month about seven weeks after it ends; we refresh after each release.

This site is independent. It is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics or any airline. The underlying data is a U.S. government work.

Definitions

On time

The flight arrived at the gate within 15 minutes of its scheduled arrival time (the DOT standard). We divide by all scheduled flights, so a cancelled or diverted flight counts as not on time. That makes our rates a little lower than figures that only count flights that operated, and it means an airline cannot look punctual by cancelling flights.

Cancelled / Diverted

Share of scheduled flights the airline reported as cancelled, or diverted to another airport.

60+ minutes late

Share of scheduled flights that arrived 60 minutes or more after the scheduled arrival time.

Average delay when late

The average arrival delay, in minutes, of flights that arrived 15 or more minutes late. Shown only when at least 10 flights were late.

Departure hour

The scheduled local departure time at the origin airport, grouped by hour. Flights before 6 am are grouped together.

Route

A nonstop airport pair in one direction. Newark to Orlando and Orlando to Newark are separate pages, linked to each other. Connecting itineraries are not included.

Sample sizes and what we leave out

• To be called "most reliable" on a route, an airline needs at least 300 flights on it in the 12 months (when at least two airlines meet that bar). Airlines with fewer flights are still shown, marked as a small sample.
• Any figure based on fewer than 50 scheduled flights is shown as "not enough flights" instead of a percentage.
• We publish full pages for the 500 busiest routes (the busiest airport pairs, both directions) and for airports with at least 1,000 departures in the 12 months. The airport-pair lookup also shows the key numbers for any other nonstop route in the data, compared with the U.S. average (“about average” = within 1.5 points for on time, 0.3 for cancelled, 1 for 60+ minutes late); routes with fewer than 50 flights are labeled small sample and not compared.
• Only airlines that report to the DOT are included. Some smaller airlines are not required to report.

Regional airlines

Many flights sold by American, Delta, United and Alaska are operated by regional airlines such as SkyWest, Republic, Envoy, PSA and Endeavor. The DOT records the airline that operated the flight, so those flights appear under the regional airline's name, with the brand it flies for noted beside it. The flight on your ticket may say "American Eagle" or "Delta Connection"; check "operated by" when you book.

How to read the numbers

• These are past results. They are a guide to how a route and airline have performed, not a prediction for a particular flight.
• Small differences (a point or two) between airlines are not meaningful.
• Across all reporting airlines, 75.6% of scheduled flights arrived on time and 1.9% were cancelled over the latest 12 months.
• Text in the "What this means" boxes is generated directly from the numbers on each page using fixed templates.

Photo credits

Photographs are licensed stock images used for illustration only. They do not show the routes, airports or airlines in our data.

• Woman at an airport window watching a plane take off: Depositphotos, asset page, standard license.
• Airliner parked at a terminal gate: Depositphotos, asset page, standard license.

Updates and corrections

Data last processed 2026-11-03. If you spot an error, the source files are public at the BTS site linked above.