JAL is the most on-time airline in 2009!

Frobes released its 2009 top 10 most on-time airlines a few weeks ago. Japan Airlines beats all of other carriers and scores the highest on-time percentage in 2009! Congratulations!

Frobes ranks the airlines based on data from FlightStats. Even though it doesn't cover all flights but the coverage is good enough to give a good idea of which airlines is doing well. Scoring the top spot is impressive, but what's more impressive is JAL is the second largest airlines based on number of flights operated in 2009 that made it to the TOP 10! JAL operated 216,478 flights and had 90.95% on-time performance. The largest airlines in the top 10 list is Luftansa who operated 386,205 flights but only 83.21% were on time last year. Top 10 average number of flights is around 174,000. This is some really impressive figures, especially when you compare them with airlines like American :P

So WE did it! I say WE because an on-time departure depends on both the staff and passengers. If there are uncooperative passengers who don't board on-time, the flight has to be delayed. Of course, if the flight crew members didn't bother to show up, the flight can't depart on time either (it did happen before, more than once, on my AA flights!). Hopefully JAL and us can keep up the good work in 2010.

Below is the top 10 list:

1. Japan Airlines/JAL (Japan)
- 2009 flights: 216,478
- Less than 15 minutes late: 90.95%
- 15-29 minutes late: 5.70%
- 30-44 minutes late: 1.31%
- More than 44 minutes late: 1.41%

2. All Nippon Airways/ANA (Japan)
- 2009 flights: 130,852
- On time (less than 15 minutes late): 90.37%
- 15-29 minutes late: 6.58%
- 30-44 minutes late: 1.53%
- More than 44 minutes late: 1.22%

3. SAS (Sweden)
- 2009 flights: 158,572
- On time (less than 15 minutes late): 89.11%
- 15-29 minutes late: 5.87%
- 30-44 minutes late: 1.91%
- More than 44 minutes late: 2.31%

4. Korean Air Lines (Korea), 88.61% on time
5. Horizon Air (USA), 85.88% on time
6. Air Nostrum (Spain), 85.80% on time
7. Chautauqua Airlines (USA), 84.60% on time
8. Qantas (Australia), 83.90% on time
9. Lufthansa (Germany), 83.21% on time
10. British European, formerly known as Jersey European (U.K.), 82.64% on time

Source:
Frobes' 2009 top 10 most on-time airlines