Is British Airways reliable?
Ranked 27 of 94 US airlines on on-time record.
371,688 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
78.17%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
1.37%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
0 min
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
—
Delays it caused itself
Rest was weather, ATC or security
Reading British Airways’ record
The extremes are far apart. On RAK to LHR it arrived on time 94% of the time; on OLB to LHR the figure was 45.92%. Same airline, same fleet, same procedures — which is the clearest argument on this site for checking the route rather than the carrier.
British Airways sits mid-table, which for an airline's punctuality is a better outcome than it sounds.
British Airways appears in the record departing from 80 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.
British Airways 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 British Airways’ 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.
British Airways month by month
Its most reliable routes
- RAK → LHR Marrakesh to London 94%
- MRU → LGW Plaine Magnien to London 93.24%
- LHR → RAK London to Marrakesh 92.69%
- KUL → LHR Sepang to London 92.22%
- SIN → LHR Singapore to London 91.62%
- ABV → LHR Abuja to London 91.53%
- LOS → LHR Lagos to London 90.48%
- LHR → AUH London to Abu Dhabi 90.2%
- BKK → LGW Bangkok to London 90.05%
- LHR → KEF London to Reykjavík 89.48%
Its worst routes
- OLB → LHR Olbia (SS) to London 45.92%
- ACC → LGW Accra to London 46.46%
- LGW → KIN London to Kingston 47.73%
- LGW → ACC London to Accra 48.68%
- JFK → LGW New York to London 48.81%
- LGW → ISB London to Islamabad 49.75%
- KLX → LHR Kalamata to London 50.47%
- KIN → LGW Kingston to London 52.27%
- DFW → LHR Dallas/Fort Worth to London 53.44%
- LHR → ACC London to Accra 54.23%
How British Airways 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 →