One of the most exciting things about the new year is discovering all of the firm facts and figures from the previous year. Today, Cirium has released its On-Time Performance figures for 2019, which show that Aeroflot was the most punctual airline of the year.

With over 500 staff including analysts, Cirium definitely understands the numbers when it comes to aviation. They've just released their annual On-Time Performance review, which shows that the Russian flag carrier was the most punctual airline during 2019. This was closely followed by ANA in the number 2 spot. Delta Air Lines claimed third place and was the most punctual US carrier. Let's take a look at some of the numbers.

Aeroflot takes the top spot

Aeroflot was crowned the most punctual airline of 2019 by data experts Cirium. In fact, across the whole year, 87.06% of the Russian flag carrier's flights arrived at their destination on time. This is despite seeing a poorer than average on-time performance in January.

Aeroflot operated a total of 272,529 flights in 2019, flying a total distance of just under 533 million kilometers. This gave each aircraft in the fleet an average daily utilization of around 10 hours. However, Aeroflot wasn't Russia's only success story. Aeroflot's competitor S7 Airlines had the second-best OTP for mainline operations within Europe.

S7
S7 is a member of the oneworld airline alliance. Photo: Getty Images

However, the other main takeaway is that Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO) ranked number one for on-time departures with a rate of 95.01%. The 219 routes served by the airport experienced an average delay of just 15 minutes in 2019 according to Cirium.

ANA comes second

All Nippon Airlines of Japan clinched the second-place spot, with an overall on-time arrival rate of 85.13% during 2019. However, ANA's average fleet utilization per day was just 70% that of Aeroflot according to Cirium. In fact, each aircraft averaged 7 hours of use per day.

ANA operated a total of 193,318 flights in 2019. This is significantly lower than Aeroflot. As a result, the airline's total mileage was also lower at 373.68 million kilometers. The airline's most flown route was from Haneda to Fukuoka Airport, which was operated 6,199 times one way in 2019 with over 2 million seats available.

ANA, Boeing 767, Engine Fire
Photo: Getty Images

Delta claims the top spot in North America

Delta Air Lines came third overall in the on-time rankings. However, the American carrier was the most punctual in North America. In fact, 84.84 of Delta's flights were on time. With over 900 aircraft in its active fleet, the airline operated over a million flights in 2019, 1,011,488 to be exact.

According to Cirium, this meant that the American carrier clocked almost 2 billion miles flown by its aircraft. These had an average daily utilization of 9.31 hours. The airline's most frequented route was Atlanta to La Guardia which clocked 5,166 flights in each direction.

All of the data presented in this article was drawn from Cirium's 2019 On-Time Performance Review, which can be downloaded from their website, Cirium.com.

What do you make of the figures announced by Cirium today? Do you think Aeroflot deserves the top spot? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!