News

What is the one thing passengers want from an airline? Be on time. OK, not losing luggage and friendly service are also important. But punctuality is a big deal in the airline business and one of the true barometers of a company’s efficiency.

With that in mind, Copa Airlines deserves credit for ranking as the second most punctual airline in the world for 2016, according to the travel analyst OAG’s annual punctuality rankings. It was the second year in a row that Copa has finished second, which is not bad. Copa was also the named the most punctual airline in Latin America, an honor it has won for four consecutive years.

According to the OAG, Copa Airlines achieved an 88.75 percent on-time performance, ranking only behind Hawaiian Airlines at 89.87 percent. But that doesn’t seem fair—Hawaiian Airlines mainly flies the sunny routes between the islands; it jumped from 9th to first in the rankings in the last year. The third best airline was Dutch KLM at 87.89 percent, followed by Australian carrier Qantas (87.56 percent) and Japan Airlines (86.74 percent).

Copa’s efficiency is particularly impressive, since it flies to a wide variety of destinations, with many different-sized airports. It’s also been growing at a rapid rate, which can make it difficult to maintain performance standards. Copa now flies to 70 destinations in 31 countries.

The OAG bases its report on 54 million flight records. And the standard for being “on time” is to arrive or leave within 15 minutes of the scheduled time. The OAG praised the airlines, noting that keeping flights on time is becoming increasingly more challenging, as flight networks expand.

“Whether it is a 17-hour long-haul service or a one-hour connecting flight to a hub, the accuracy of both scheduling the service and delivering the stated on-time performance is incredible; especially when compared to so many other forms of transport,” the OAG said in its report.

Among airports, Panama City’s Tocumen was rated third-best among medium-sized airports, with an on-time percentage of 89.56 percent, trailing only Birmingham in the U.K. and Osaka, Japan.