Air Canada promises to improve after damning report despite years of complaints

On the heels of a new ranking that named Air Canada the worst airline in North America for flight delays, the carrier is vowing to step up its game — a statement that has been a long time coming after years of customer complaints.

Aviation analytics site Cirium's On-Time Performance Review for 2023 showed that only 63 per cent of Air Canada's flights landed on time over the course of the year, putting the company in 10th place out of 10 major carriers analyzed.

On the other end of the spectrum, 85 per cent of Delta flights arrived "on-time," in this case within 15 minutes of scheduled arrival.

Are we surprised? :)

— Yigit (@Yigit7902) January 3, 2024

In response to the ranking, a spokesperson for Air Canada told the CBC on Tuesday that the company will be focusing on "further raising" its on-time performance, which is something the brand has been working on for many months.

"Our operation has been consistently improving so that by year-end, our monthly on-time performance showed a double-digit improvement over July, a significant increase," they told the outlet.

U.S. airlines generally outperformed Canada's big two in the rating, with Alaska, American, United, Southwest and even ultra-low-cost Spirit having more on-time flights than both Air Canada and WestJet, which came seventh with a score of 69 per cent.

Some would argue that more players in the U.S. market, and thus better competition, fosters these better results.

Fed-up Air Canada customers blast the airline on social media https://t.co/JtO2Tq9mqO #Canada #AirCanada #SocialMedia

— blogTO (@blogTO) April 11, 2023

Air Canada's score means that around a whopping 140,000 flights were late, impacting tens of millions of travellers, many of whom have taken to social media to reveal their travel horror stories, some of which went understandably viral.