What is the best time of day to fly to avoid delays?
The first flight of the morning. Flights scheduled to leave between 5 and 7 AM arrived on time 91.7%, 90.2% and 87.5% of the time in the twelve months to July 2026, and the 5 AM departures arrived three and a half minutes early on average. On-time rates then fall by roughly two points an hour all day to 67.7% for 8 PM departures, because two-thirds of the delay minutes in the evening are charged to the aircraft arriving late from its previous flight. Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days (81.4% and 81.1%), Sunday the worst (73.6%); September is the best month (83.4%) and July the worst (71.7%).
- 91.7%of 5 AM departures arrived on time; 6 AM was 90.2%, 8 PM was 67.7%
- 24 ptsthe gap between the best and worst departure hour, bigger than between any two airlines or any two months
- Sundaythe worst day of the week: 73.6% on time and 2.9% cancelled, against Tuesday’s 81.4% and 1.6%
- 69.5%on-time rate in the week after Thanksgiving 2025, the worst full week of the year
Based on 7,043,858 scheduled domestic flights by all reporting airlines between 1 August 2025 and 31 July 2026, grouped by scheduled local departure hour, weekday, month and week, as reported to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Explore the live data.
What time of day has the fewest delays?
Five and six in the morning. Of the 191,627 flights scheduled to depart in the 5 AM hour, 91.7% arrived on time and only 7.5% left the gate 15 or more minutes late; the 483,365 departures in the 6 AM hour arrived on time 90.2% of the time. Every hour after that is worse than the one before until 8 PM, when 67.7% arrive on time, 35% leave late and the average flight lands 16.7 minutes behind schedule. The 11 PM hour recovers to 80.2% because the evening bank has cleared.
| Departure hour | Flights | Arrived on time | Left late | Avg arrival delay | Cancelled |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 AM | 191,627 | 91.7% | 7.5% | −3.5 min | 1.6% |
| 6 AM | 483,365 | 90.2% | 8.0% | −2.4 min | 1.9% |
| 7 AM | 522,173 | 87.5% | 10.0% | −0.9 min | 1.5% |
| 8 AM | 487,005 | 85.6% | 12.3% | 0.3 min | 1.5% |
| 10 AM | 447,005 | 82.1% | 17.7% | 3.5 min | 1.5% |
| 12 PM | 422,954 | 78.3% | 22.4% | 7.4 min | 1.5% |
| 2 PM | 399,425 | 73.9% | 26.9% | 11.7 min | 1.7% |
| 4 PM | 405,547 | 70.2% | 30.3% | 15.0 min | 1.9% |
| 6 PM | 415,433 | 68.1% | 33.1% | 17.1 min | 2.3% |
| 8 PM | 308,848 | 67.7% | 35.0% | 16.7 min | 2.4% |
| 10 PM | 155,896 | 71.9% | 31.0% | 13.3 min | 2.7% |
| 11 PM | 59,073 | 80.2% | 23.0% | 4.5 min | 1.6% |
The pattern holds for every airline and every month: the Time of day tab shows each airline’s curve and the hour-by-month grid, and the worst cell in the year is a July evening. A 5 AM departure is also the least likely to be cancelled for most of the year, though the early flights carry a slightly higher cancellation rate in winter, when the overnight storm has already made the decision.
Why do delays pile up through the day?
Because the plane you are waiting for is still somewhere else. At 5 AM only 14% of the delay minutes are charged to a late inbound aircraft and 64% to the airline’s own operation; by 7 PM the inbound aircraft accounts for 50% of a much larger total. Delay minutes per flight rise from 8.4 at 5 AM to 23.1 at 6 PM, and almost all of that growth is the knock-on from earlier flights. Air traffic system delay peaks in the morning and afternoon at about a quarter of the total; weather stays near 6% all day.
| Departure hour | Late inbound aircraft | Airline | Air traffic system | Weather | Delay minutes per flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 AM | 14% | 64% | 14% | 9% | 8.4 |
| 7 AM | 16% | 54% | 24% | 7% | 9.1 |
| 9 AM | 31% | 39% | 24% | 6% | 10.5 |
| 11 AM | 39% | 33% | 22% | 5% | 13.1 |
| 1 PM | 42% | 30% | 22% | 6% | 16.1 |
| 3 PM | 42% | 28% | 23% | 6% | 19.3 |
| 5 PM | 44% | 27% | 23% | 6% | 22.2 |
| 7 PM | 50% | 27% | 18% | 6% | 23.0 |
| 9 PM | 47% | 34% | 12% | 7% | 21.3 |
| 11 PM | 40% | 46% | 10% | 3% | 13.4 |
This is the practical reason the first departure is safest: the aircraft slept at the gate. It is also why a cancellation late in the day is worse than one in the morning, since the rebooking options are the same cascading flights. The Time of day tab plots the cause mix by hour for any airline.
Which day of the week is best?
Tuesday, then Wednesday: 81.4% and 81.1% of flights arrived on time, with average arrival delays of four minutes and the lowest cancellation rates (1.6% and 0.9%). Sunday is the worst day on every measure, 73.6% on time, 12.5 minutes average delay and 2.9% of flights cancelled, with Monday (76.1%) and Friday (76.3%) next. Saturday is better than its traffic suggests at 78.5% because fewer flights are scheduled.
| Day | Flights a day | Arrived on time | Avg arrival delay | Cancelled | 3+ hours late |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 20,293 | 76.1% | 10.5 min | 2.5% | 1.9% |
| Tuesday | 18,263 | 81.4% | 4.0 min | 1.6% | 1.3% |
| Wednesday | 18,377 | 81.1% | 4.1 min | 0.9% | 1.2% |
| Thursday | 20,053 | 77.2% | 7.9 min | 1.0% | 1.4% |
| Friday | 20,288 | 76.3% | 9.7 min | 1.5% | 1.7% |
| Saturday | 17,526 | 78.5% | 7.3 min | 2.2% | 1.6% |
| Sunday | 20,268 | 73.6% | 12.5 min | 2.9% | 2.0% |
Part of Sunday’s problem is that the year’s worst storms landed on Sundays: 25 January 2026 alone cancelled 8,681 flights. The Day and month tab shows the weekday pattern for any period, so a single bad weekend can be checked.
Which month is worst?
July: 71.7% of flights arrived on time, the average arrival was 15.6 minutes late and 2.4% of arrivals were three or more hours late, the worst month on all three. December (73.2%) and June (74.3%) are next, which makes summer thunderstorms worse for punctuality than winter snow. Winter is worse for cancellations: January cancelled 4.7% of flights, more than twice any other month. September is the best month on every measure, 83.4% on time and 0.5% cancelled, with October and February close behind.
| Month | Arrived on time | Avg arrival delay | Cancelled | Weather cancellations | 3+ hours late |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 79.2% | 6.4 min | 4.7% | 22,463 | 1.7% |
| February | 80.2% | 4.3 min | 2.3% | 9,910 | 1.3% |
| March | 75.7% | 10.6 min | 2.9% | 10,027 | 2.1% |
| April | 79.8% | 4.8 min | 0.9% | 3,033 | 1.1% |
| May | 78.6% | 6.2 min | 0.9% | 3,319 | 1.3% |
| June | 74.3% | 11.7 min | 1.6% | 6,603 | 1.9% |
| July | 71.7% | 15.6 min | 2.6% | 8,902 | 2.4% |
| August | 77.4% | 9.2 min | 1.1% | 3,869 | 1.6% |
| September | 83.4% | 2.3 min | 0.5% | 1,114 | 1.0% |
| October | 79.7% | 5.6 min | 0.5% | 1,120 | 1.1% |
| November | 79.4% | 6.4 min | 2.5% | 4,320 | 1.5% |
| December | 73.2% | 13.0 min | 1.5% | 5,021 | 2.1% |
The months here are the twelve in the period, so January is January 2026 and July is July 2026. The Day and month tab lets you compare the same month across years, where the summer-is-worst pattern repeats every year since 2003 except 2020.
Is flying at Thanksgiving and Christmas as bad as people think?
Thanksgiving week itself is fine; the week after is the worst of the year. The week of 24 November 2025 arrived on time 75.3% of the time, a little under the year’s 77.6%, but the following week fell to 69.5% with an average delay of 18 minutes. Christmas week (22 December) managed 73.7% with 2.3% cancelled, and the New Year week 70.2%. The week before Thanksgiving, at 84.1%, and the first full week of January, at 83.5%, were among the best weeks of the year. The 4th of July week was 76.7%, and the week after it 70.9%.
| Week starting | Flights | Arrived on time | Avg arrival delay | Cancelled |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Sep 2025 (best of the year) | 134,259 | 87.5% | −2.4 min | 0.1% |
| 17 Nov 2025 (week before Thanksgiving) | 135,682 | 84.1% | 0.9 min | 0.8% |
| 24 Nov 2025 (Thanksgiving) | 132,872 | 75.3% | 12.0 min | 2.2% |
| 1 Dec 2025 (week after) | 131,820 | 69.5% | 17.9 min | 1.4% |
| 15 Dec 2025 | 133,872 | 75.9% | 9.7 min | 1.1% |
| 22 Dec 2025 (Christmas) | 130,160 | 73.7% | 11.5 min | 2.3% |
| 29 Dec 2025 (New Year) | 133,085 | 70.2% | 15.1 min | 1.8% |
| 5 Jan 2026 | 122,639 | 83.5% | 0.6 min | 0.4% |
| 18 May 2026 (week before Memorial Day) | 137,410 | 71.9% | 15.0 min | 2.0% |
| 25 May 2026 (Memorial Day) | 140,778 | 79.3% | 5.0 min | 0.5% |
| 29 Jun 2026 (4th of July) | 137,447 | 76.7% | 10.7 min | 1.8% |
| 6 Jul 2026 (week after) | 143,448 | 70.9% | 16.6 min | 2.1% |
Holiday weeks carry slightly fewer flights, not more, because business travel drops out, and the airlines plan for them; the weeks either side are ordinary schedules meeting bad weather. The Holidays tab draws every week of any period with the holiday weeks marked.
When a flight is late, how late is it?
Usually not very. 61% of flights in the period arrived early, 26% of them by 15 minutes or more, and another 17% within 14 minutes of schedule, which is where the 77.6% on-time rate comes from. Of the 22% that counted as late, half were 15 to 44 minutes late. One flight in 16 (6.4%) arrived between one and three hours late, and one in 60 (1.6%) three hours or more.
| Arrival | Flights | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 15 or more minutes early | 1,821,971 | 26.4% |
| 1 to 14 minutes early | 2,379,522 | 34.5% |
| On time to 14 minutes late | 1,151,521 | 16.7% |
| 15 to 29 minutes late | 522,494 | 7.6% |
| 30 to 59 minutes late | 466,500 | 6.8% |
| 1 to 2 hours late | 327,461 | 4.7% |
| 2 to 3 hours late | 115,832 | 1.7% |
| 3 hours or more late | 110,209 | 1.6% |
Early arrivals are partly schedule padding: airlines now allow about five minutes more than a flight takes, so a flight that leaves on time usually lands early. The report’s distribution chart shows the same bands for any airline, hour or month.
How was this measured?
Flights come from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance tables. Hours are the scheduled departure hour in the departure airport’s local time; weekdays and months are the scheduled departure date. On time is arrival less than 15 minutes after schedule among completed arrivals; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately. Delay causes are the airline’s own coding, reported for arrivals 15 or more minutes late since June 2003, and “late inbound aircraft” means the delay was inherited from the previous flight of the same aircraft.
The period is the report’s default, 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026, with all reporting airlines together. Weeks start on Monday; the first and last weeks of the period are partial and are left out of the best-and-worst comparisons.
The data lives in a Power BI semantic model on Microsoft Fabric. Every number on this page was produced by an AI assistant running the report’s own queries against that model, and the same model powers the live public report.
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