Is Aer Lingus reliable?
Ranked 49 of 94 US airlines on on-time record.
70,470 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
75.03%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
1.92%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
—
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
—
Delays it caused itself
Rest was weather, ATC or security
Reading Aer Lingus’ record
The extremes are far apart. On BRS to DUB it arrived on time 90.51% of the time; on MAN to DUB the figure was 60.73%. Same airline, same fleet, same procedures — which is the clearest argument on this site for checking the route rather than the carrier.
Aer Lingus sits mid-table, which for an airline's punctuality is a better outcome than it sounds.
Aer Lingus appears in the record departing from 8 countrys. Because each regulator publishes on its own terms, a figure spanning several of them is an average over several definitions — close enough to compare, but the country pages are the more exact reading.
Each axis is a percentile against the other US airlines in the same period, not an absolute score. Further out is better than most; nearer the centre is worse than most.
Aer Lingus in five measures
An airline's headline on-time rate hides more than it shows. Two carriers can both arrive on time 75% of the time while one is late by twelve minutes and the other by an hour, or while one is evenly mediocre everywhere and the other is excellent on most routes and dreadful on a few.
These five axes pull those apart. Each is scored against the other US airlines in the same period rather than on an absolute scale, because on-time rates cluster tightly enough that raw numbers would draw every carrier as the same shape.
Same everywhere is the one worth reading twice: it measures how far Aer Lingus’ on-time rate moves from route to route. A carrier scoring low there has an average propped up by routes you may not be flying.
Its most reliable routes
- BRS → DUB Bristol to Dublin 90.51%
- GLA → ORK Glasgow to Cork 90.36%
- ORK → LHR Cork to London 88.17%
- LHR → ORK London to Cork 86.56%
- LHR → NOC London to Charlestown 85.93%
- ORK → GLA Cork to Glasgow 82.97%
- BHD → SOU Belfast to Southampton 82.04%
- DUB → BRS Dublin to Bristol 81.76%
- BHD → EMA Belfast to Nottingham 81.63%
- DUB → LPL Dublin to Liverpool 79.19%
Its worst routes
- MAN → DUB Manchester to Dublin 60.73%
- BHX → DUB Birmingham to Dublin 62.13%
- EXT → DUB Exeter to Dublin 64.2%
- EDI → DUB Ingliston to Dublin 67.21%
- EDI → BHD Ingliston to Belfast 69.64%
- NCL → DUB Newcastle upon Tyne to Dublin 69.8%
- BHD → GLA Belfast to Glasgow 70.46%
- BHX → BHD Birmingham to Belfast 70.52%
- DUB → EXT Dublin to Exeter 71.18%
- LBA → DUB Leeds to Dublin 71.65%
How Aer Lingus compares
Figures cover March 2025 – August 2026 and are counted from the regulators' own published files. A grade describes the past and is not a prediction about a particular flight, nor a safety rating. How the grade is calculated →