The African airline that’s one of the most ‘on time’ in the world

There is nothing more frustrating for airline passengers than delays and cancellations to their flights. A recent  analysis of plane departures between March 1, 2024, and September 30, 2024, named and Canada as the countries with the highest cancellation rates – at around 5% and 3.4%, respectively.

Researchers looked at 10 countries – the USA, China, India, Spain, UK, Japan, Brazil, Italy, Germany and . In the US there were over five million fights during the time period, of which roughly 140,000 were cancelled. This gave America a flight cancellation rate of 2.76% for 2024, the third highest among the countries surveyed.

In contrast, and India had the lowest rates, at around 0.8% and 1.1% respectively.

Now a new survey carried out in February 2025 by Cirium’s On-Time Performance Report has highlighted the exceptional punctuality of several global airlines.

Overall, the global aviation industry saw a decrease in flight cancellations by 18% last month.

In a tremendous boost for , FlySafair achieved an on-time performance (OTP) of 95.82%, highlighting its commitment to reliability.

The airline was the sole representative of the continent in these rankings.

The company recored just two cancellations for the month, despite operating in a challenging environment with shortages of air traffic controllers and navigation support at some airports.

The top European airlines in the OTP rankings were Iberia (91.25%) and British Airways (86.89%).

FlySafair is an international low-cost airline based in , flying to 14 destinations in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The company was established in August 2013 and its inaugural flight came on October 16, 2014.

Passengers on one of its flights last April had a lucky escape, after their plane lost its left main landing gear.

The FlySafair Boeing 737-800 was still able to land safely and there were no injuries among either the crew or passengers on board.