The Worst Month Each Airline Had

Summary

Alaska Airlines cancelled 17.55% of its scheduled flights in January 2024, the worst month of any airline listed. 15 airlines are listed with the month each one did worst.

Alaska Airlines cancelled 17.55% of its scheduled flights in January 2024 (3,119 of 17,775), the highest rate in any month for any of the 15 airlines listed, counting only airline-months with at least 1,000 scheduled flights. Each listed airline’s own worst month cancelled between 2.53% and 17.55% of its flights.

One row for each airline and month with at least 1,000 scheduled flights, among the 526 that qualify for the 15 airlines listed. An airline can appear more than once. Cancellation rate is cancelled over scheduled flights. On-time arrival is arrivals within 15 minutes of schedule over flights that completed, so cancelled flights are in the first rate and out of the second.

Airlines with at least 10,000 scheduled flights in the data and at least 6 months of 1,000 or more flights, ordered by the rate in their worst month. The four columns after the worst month use only the months compared.

Only months that were the worst month of at least two of the airlines listed. The last column adds every covered airline in the data that month, ranked or not.

Alaska Airlines had 29.9% of its cancellations, over the months compared, in January 2024 alone, a month that held 2.2% of its flights. Alaska Airlines had the widest gap between its worst month and the rest: 17.55% in January 2024 against 0.92% in its other months. 3 of the 15 airlines had January 2024 as their worst month, a month in which all covered airlines together cancelled 3.73%.

A cancellation rate counts flights the airline scheduled and did not operate. It does not say why: the monthly table has no cause for a cancellation, and a month with a high rate can hold a storm, a strike, a software failure or a schedule cut the airline made in advance. The data runs from July 2023 to July 2026, so a worse month before or after that window would not appear. An airline’s worst month is its worst of the months in the data; airlines with fewer months have fewer chances to hit a bad one, and the table gives the number compared. Airlines under the flight floors are not ranked. The report on why airlines cancel covers the coded reasons.