Southwest Airlines in February for the second straight month topped the list North American carrier on-time performance, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.
Southwest ranked first among 10 reporting North American carriers with a February on-time performance of 82.3 percent, down 1 percentage point from January's level. Spirit Airlines finished close behind Southwest at 81.8 percent in February.
Delta Air Lines had taken the top spot in 15 of the 16 months prior to January, with the exception of July 2024, due to the CrowdStrike IT outage. In February, it landed in third at 80.6 percent, down half a percentage point from January.
On-time performance for the two Canadian carriers in Cirium's North American rankings, Air Canada and WestJet, plummeted in February amid a series of winter storms that affected much of the country. Air Canada's February on-time performance dropped to 60 percent from 68.8 in January, while WestJet's dropped to 58.3 percent from 72.9 percent.
On the whole, the North American airlines' February on-time performance was 74.7 percent, down from 77.9 percent the month before and dragged down notably by the Canadian carriers.
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No North American carrier made Cirium's February list of top performing global airlines, which was topped by Aeromexico.
Four U.S. carriers had February completion factors of at least 99 percent, led by Southwest at 99.6 percent and followed by Spirit, Delta and Frontier Airlines.
In February, 13,587 flights were canceled in North America, down from 20,885 in January.
A flight is considered on time if the aircraft arrives at the gate within 15 minutes of its scheduled arrival time.
RELATED: Cirium January North American on-time performance report