Is Turkish Airlines reliable?
Ranked 29 of 94 US airlines on on-time record.
17,241 flights · March 2025 – August 2026 · US Bureau of Transportation Statistics
75.85%
Arrived on time
Within 15 minutes of schedule
0.44%
Cancelled
Share of scheduled flights
1 min
When late, late by
Average across delayed arrivals
—
Delays it caused itself
Rest was weather, ATC or security
Reading Turkish Airlines’ record
Turkish Airlines sits mid-table, which for an airline's punctuality is a better outcome than it sounds.
The extremes are far apart. On IST to STN it arrived on time 90.55% of the time; on MAN to IST the figure was 63.82%. Same airline, same fleet, same procedures — which is the clearest argument on this site for checking the route rather than the carrier.
Turkish Airlines 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.
Turkish Airlines 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 Turkish Airlines’ 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.
Turkish Airlines month by month
Its most reliable routes
- IST → STN Istanbul to London 90.55%
- IST → EDI Istanbul to Ingliston 81.74%
- IST → LGW Istanbul to London 80.88%
- LHR → IST London to Istanbul 79.43%
- IST → BHX Istanbul to Birmingham 79.37%
- IST → LHR Istanbul to London 76.88%
- IST → MAN Istanbul to Manchester 76.33%
- EDI → IST Ingliston to Istanbul 74.65%
- STN → IST London to Istanbul 74%
- LGW → IST London to Istanbul 72.66%
Its worst routes
- MAN → IST Manchester to Istanbul 63.82%
- BHX → IST Birmingham to Istanbul 68.88%
- LGW → IST London to Istanbul 72.66%
- STN → IST London to Istanbul 74%
- EDI → IST Ingliston to Istanbul 74.65%
- IST → MAN Istanbul to Manchester 76.33%
- IST → LHR Istanbul to London 76.88%
- IST → BHX Istanbul to Birmingham 79.37%
- LHR → IST London to Istanbul 79.43%
- IST → LGW Istanbul to London 80.88%
How Turkish Airlines 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 →