Travel data and analytics company, Cirium has named South African Airways as one of the top-performing airlines for on-time performance (OTP) across the globe in 2019.
SAA was ranked fourth in the category for Middle East and Africa mainline carriers, ahead of some of its major competitors, making SAA the leading African carrier on OTP.
Russia’s Aeroflot was named the world’s most on-time mainline airline, as well as the most punctual in Europe.
The 2019 measurement of on-time performance found that 86.7% of Aeroflot’s flights operated on-time in 2019. Japanese airline All Nippon Airways (ANA) took second place with 86.3% of its flights on time and America’s Delta Air Lines (last year’s winner) took third place in the global category
‘According to the International Airlines Transport Association’s benchmark of OTP, an airline is on-time when it arrives within 15 minutes of the scheduled time of arrival or departs within 15 minutes of the scheduled departure time. We are excited that most of the time we adhere to these deadlines,’ said Zuks Ramasia, SAA Acting CEO.
SAA’s overall on-time performance across its route network is 85.69%.
Cirium produces monthly OTP reports and for example, in September 2019 SAA beat out all its competition in the Middle East and Africa to be the regions most punctual airline with an 88.8% rating.
‘We place a high premium on punctuality as measured through OTP. It is one of our most important customer impact performance indicators. The more punctual we are, the happier the customers we keep,’ said Ramasia.
Cirium works with over 90% of the world’s top 50 airlines and has published its annual On-time Performance (OTP) Review for the past 11 years.
‘By embracing digital transformation and leveraging data to its full potential, Cirium can help the aviation industry harness its power to improve on-time performance and enhance the passenger experience,’ said Jeremy Bowen, Cirium CEO.
Image: SAA
