2024 delayed and canceled flight trends & stats

Imagine you’ve spent several days preparing for a trip. You’ve packed and folded all your clothes, put away your charger and electronics, neatly arranged your documents and passport. You’ve looked up all the relevant travel info, and are ready for a smooth ride to your destination.

But when you arrive at the airport, there’s a huge crowd in front of the gate. Soon, you find out that your flight has been delayed: first one hour, then two, then five. Finally, you find out the flight has been canceled! You’ll have to fly out tomorrow instead, missing your important work meeting in the morning.

No one likes it when their flight is delayed or canceled. Unfortunately, sometimes unexpected circumstances happen, and you have no choice but to make last-minute changes to your plans. As part of our mission to help business travelers have a great travel experience, TravelPerk is sharing our latest new data on flight delays and cancellations. We’re an industry-leading travel management company that helps travelers book and organise their trips through our platform. By sharing this research, we hope to contribute to the understanding of recent trends in business travel and how this may impact our customers, so we can continue to provide great service.Here’s what we’ve discovered about delayed and canceled flights this year:

Methodology

The proprietary data analyzed in this article includes flights that have departed between March 1st, 2024 and September 30th, 2024. Approximately 18.6 million flights are included here. That’s around 3.01 million flights per month!

These flights run along 275,500 different routes. The countries with the greatest number of departing flights are the USA, China, India, Spain, and the UK. The delays mentioned in this analysis are based on arrival time, not departure time.

Flight cancellations in 2024

China, Canada, and the US lead the world in flight cancellations

Cancelled Flights By Departing Country 2024

Among the top ten countries with the highest flight volumes during the observed period, China and Canada had the highest cancellation rates, at around 5% and 3.4% respectively. In contrast, Spain and India had the lowest cancellation rates, at around 0.8% and 1.1% respectively.

Out of over 5 million flights in the US, around 140,000 were canceled during the observed period. This leaves the US flight cancellation rate for 2024 at 2.76%. The US had the third-highest cancellation rate among the ten countries considered.

Want more detailed insights on how travel is being disrupted this year?

Check out the results of our 2024 Business Travel Disruption Survey

The rate of canceled flights dropped sharply in July 2024

The percentage of canceled flights across all included countries ranged from 1.5% to 3.2% over the observed months (March to September 2024).

Flight cancellation percentages started high at around 3%, peaking at 3.2% in June. There was then a sharp decrease to 2.2% in July, followed by a further decrease to 1.5% in August, and then a plateau.

Flight delays in 2024

Around 37% of flights experienced a minor or major delay

Approximately 63% of all flights experienced no delay during the period studied. The majority of delays were minor, with most (around 18-22% across all months) lasting from five to 30 minutes. An additional 10-11% of flights experienced a very short delay of up to five minutes.

Major delays from 30 minutes to three hours ranged between 4-10% across months, with the highest number occurring in July. Delays of more than three hours remained low, at less than 0.15% across all months.

This year performed relatively on par with last year in terms of the rate of flights with no delays and an on-time arrival. However, there was an increase in the percentage of flights with significant delays. This was mainly due to July’s poor on-time performance: in 2024, July had the lowest percentage of no-delay flights (around 57%), and by far the highest percentage of majorly delayed flights (10.3%).

Crowdstrike outage likely caused the spike in major delays in July of 2024

On July 19th, 2024, a failed software update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike affected 8.5 million computers running Windows around the world, causing them to crash and show a critical system error. While the meltdown lasted only a few days, the repercussions were severe, with insurers estimating that it would cost Fortune 500 companies around $5.4 billion in damages. This incident caused increased delays and other flight interruptions in July 2024.

Other factors, including planned strike action at London Gatwick airport, strikes at Italian airports, and the threat of strike action at US airports may have had some role to play in the increased flight delays seen in July. As one of the busiest periods for air traffic during the summer holiday season, this caused significant disruption.

The US and Brazil had the highest rates of on-time flights, while Germany and Italy experienced more delays

Of the top 10 countries with the highest flight volumes during the observed period, the US and Brazil stand out with the highest rates of on-time flights. Around 70% of US flights and 72% of Brazilian flights were on time during this period. In contrast, just 42% of German flights and 49% of Italian flights were on time.

Brazil and Japan had the lowest rates of major flight delays, at 2.6% and 3.5% respectively. On the other hand, flights departing from Germany (9.7%) and Italy (10.3%) had the highest rates of major delays.

Don’t let delays and cancellations put a damper on your travel plans

From IT outages to strikes and weather delays, 2024 has seen plenty of incidents disrupting flights and leaving travelers stranded. Some countries, like America and China, experienced a high number of cancellations. Countries in Europe, like Germany and Italy, were more impacted by delays.

Regardless of the type of disruption, travel disruptions can be a big source of stress—especially if you happen to be traveling for a business trip. Fortunately, if you’re a business traveler or travel manager, there are several steps you can take to make sure delays and cancellations don’t ruin your plans.

3 tips for managing flight delays and cancellations as a business travel manager

Know where your travelers are at all times

Delays happen, but if there’s a problem you’ll want to know where your business travelers are. TravelPerk’s interactive travel map lets travel managers keep track of travelers in real time, so they can act immediately and fulfill their duty of care obligations.

Make sure you’re able to quickly update travel plans

If flights are delayed or canceled, travelers may need to update plans quickly while on the go. When rebooking through TravelPerk, you’ll have access to a 24/7 customer support team via phone and chat, with a target response time of 15 seconds. With FlexiPerk, you can also make your trips refundable and get 80% of your money back if you need to cancel any time up to two hours before travel.

Stay informed on what’s going on

Is there likely to be an issue with your flight? With TravelPerk’s TravelCare solution, you’ll be the first to know about developing situations like public health emergencies, airstrikes, and more that may affect your air travel plans.

To learn more about disruptions to business travel in 2024, check out the results of our Business Travel Disruption Survey.

Delayed and canceled flight statistics from 2024

Methodology

Flight cancellations in 2024

China, Canada, and the US lead the world in flight cancellations

Want more detailed insights on how travel is being disrupted this year?

The rate of canceled flights dropped sharply in July 2024

Flight delays in 2024

Around 37% of flights experienced a minor or major delay

Crowdstrike outage likely caused the spike in major delays in July of 2024

The US and Brazil had the highest rates of on-time flights, while Germany and Italy experienced more delays

Don’t let delays and cancellations put a damper on your travel plans

3 tips for managing flight delays and cancellations as a business travel manager

Know where your travelers are at all times

Make sure you’re able to quickly update travel plans

Stay informed on what’s going on

Make business travel simpler. Forever.

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