ADL to PLO flight delays
Adelaide (ADL) Port Lincoln (PLO)
4,191 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · Australian Government BITRE
77.67%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
4.58%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
—
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
—
Delay per flight
Averaged over every flight flown
What the record says about this route
Which airline you fly changes the odds here. QantasLink arrived on time 16.9 points more often than Rex Airlines over the same period on the same route — same airports, same weather, same air traffic control. A gap that survives all of that is about how the two airlines are run.
Cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth pricing here: 4.58% of scheduled flights never operated. A late flight still gets you there. A cancelled one leaves you rebooking, and on a route with few daily departures that can mean losing a day.
The season swings this route hard. In January it ran 20.1 points more punctual than in October — a difference bigger than the one between the best and worst airlines on most routes. If the date is flexible, it is worth more than the carrier.
The Adelaide to Port Lincoln route sits close to the middle of the record — neither notably punctual nor notably late.
Which airline should you fly on this route?
Over March 2025 – August 2026, QantasLink arrived on time most often on ADL to PLO. Rex Airlines was late most often. Flights ran closest to schedule in January and worst in October.
Every airline on ADL to PLO
Ranked by how many flights each one operated. A carrier with fewer than 100 flights in the period is listed but not graded.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Avg delay | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rex Airlines | 2,554 | 70.98% | 5.56% | — | D |
| QantasLink | 1,637 | 87.84% | 3.05% | — | B |
Month by month
Share of flights that arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, by month flown.
The return leg
PLO to ADL Port Lincoln back to Adelaide 80.12% on time CCommon questions
Are flights from Adelaide to Port Lincoln usually delayed?
77.67% of flights on the ADL to PLO route arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, so roughly 2 in every ten arrived late. That is about the same as the average route in this record.
Which airline is most on time from Adelaide to Port Lincoln?
QantasLink, at 87.84% on time across 1,637 flights. The least punctual on the route was Rex Airlines at 70.98%.
How often are ADL to PLO flights cancelled?
4.58% of scheduled flights did not operate — about 46 in every thousand. That is high enough that cancellation, not delay, is the risk worth planning around.
What is the best month to fly Adelaide to Port Lincoln?
January, when 89.5% of flights arrived on time. The worst was October at 69.4%.
What these figures do and do not tell you
Everything on this page is counted from the flights that actually operated on ADL to PLO during March 2025 – August 2026, as reported by the airlines to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. "On time" is the federal definition: arriving at the gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.
A route's record is a description of the past, not a forecast. Weather, air traffic control and the aircraft's earlier flights that day drive most delays, and none of them are predictable from a historical rate. What the record does tell you is whether this route runs late more often than others, and which carrier on it has the better history — which is the part you can actually act on when you book.
Cancellations are counted separately from delays because they are a different problem for a traveller: a late flight still gets you there. How the grade is calculated →