Airlines invest much time and effort into running on schedule and that paid off in 2019 for Garuda Indonesia as it topped the OAG global punctuality league with 19 out of 20 flights arriving on time.
The 2019 full-year on-time performance ladder, which looks at the biggest 250 passenger airlines and whether their flights arrive within 15 minutes of the scheduled time, found that the Indonesian flag carrier’s OTP of 95 percent eased out an improved performance by South America’s Copa Airlines of 92 percent.
They were followed by Skymark Airlines (90.12 percent), Hawaiian Airlines (87.4 percent) and the LATAM Airlines Group (86.41 percent).
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OAG said in its commentary that the results once more showed that airlines and airports of all sizes in all parts of the world could achieve excellent on-time performance.
It noted that Garuda operated 35 percent of its flights out of Jakarta’s congested Soekarno-Hatta International Airport.
“With a third runway at the airport having entered commercial service part way through 2019 it will be interesting to see if the airline can improve punctuality even further in 2020,’’ it said.
Garuda also took the top positions in the mainline airlines and Asia-Pacific categories.
A performance improvement saw LATAM top the mega airline category for the second year, running ahead of Aeroflot (86.3 percent) and All Nippon Airways (85.92 percent).
Skymark came in ahead of Jetstar Asia (85.48 percent) and Thai AirAsia (84.49 percent) in the low-cost airline category.
Hawaiian was North America’s most punctual airline ahead of Delta (83.56 percent) and Alaska Airlines (81.49 percent).
Copa, LATAM and Sky Airline (83.42 percent0 took the top three positions in Latin America.
Azerbaijan Airlines (86.81 percent) proved the winner in Europe, followed by Aeroflot and Iberia (84.06 percent).
In the Middle East and Africa, Safair (94.4 percent) took the top position followed by Etihad (83.4 percent) and Qatar (80.32 percent). Dubai-based giant Emirates ranked fifth with an OTP of 79.47 percent.
In terms of airports, Minsk (92.6 percent) won the small airports category, Panama City (92.21 percent) the medium category, Osaka Itami (88.03 percent) the large category and Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen (83.42 percent) the major category.
Moscow Sheremetyevo (86.87 percent) narrowly won the mega airports spot ahead of Tokyo Haneda (86.6 percent) and Singapore Changi (84.03 percent).
OAG singled out Japan for attention, observing that both major airlines made it into the top 20 airlines worldwide, with All Nippon Airlines running seventh and Japan Airlines 15th.
The US also deserved attention with eight of the top 20 mega airports, 10 of the top 20 major airports and eight of the top 10 large airports.
Nine Brazilian airports also made it into one or another of the top 20 airport list, the aviation data company said.
"For airlines and airports alike, a key to improving punctuality is having a clear grasp of performance, and that means timely and accurate data,'' OAG said.
"Many of the airlines and airports mentioned here are sophisticated users of data, capturing insights from every part of their operations."
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