Why your return flight runs later than your outbound
The same route, flown the other way, is measurably worse. We checked every route in the record to see how often that holds.
Computed from 10,423,751 flights · January 2025 – August 2026 · recalculated whenever new data lands
A route is two routes. Los Angeles to New York and New York to Los Angeles share an aircraft type, an airline and a pair of airports, and travellers reasonably assume they share a reliability. Across 4,212 paired routes with enough flights to compare, 37% differ by five percentage points or more between the two directions.
The cause is the flying day. An aircraft that leaves late in the morning is still late in the evening, because a schedule with no slack cannot absorb the loss — so whichever direction is scheduled later in the day carries the accumulated delay of everything that went wrong before it. This is why a morning departure is worth more than a good airline.
The practical consequence is small and cheap: when a trip allows either, book the outbound early and accept the later return, rather than the reverse.
| Route | Outbound | Return | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| LTN ↔ LIS · Luton–Lisbon | 77% | 44.11% | +32.9 pts |
| LIS ↔ LTN · Lisbon–Luton | 44.11% | 77% | -32.9 pts |
| MDW ↔ PDX · Chicago–Portland | 61.62% | 89.07% | -27.4 pts |
| PDX ↔ MDW · Portland–Chicago | 89.07% | 61.62% | +27.4 pts |
| MCO ↔ RSW · Orlando–Fort Myers | 60.73% | 83.66% | -22.9 pts |
| RSW ↔ MCO · Fort Myers–Orlando | 83.66% | 60.73% | +22.9 pts |
| MLA ↔ MAN · Valletta–Manchester | 47.4% | 69.11% | -21.7 pts |
| MAN ↔ MLA · Manchester–Valletta | 69.11% | 47.4% | +21.7 pts |
| TIA ↔ STN · Rinas–London | 55.95% | 75.94% | -20 pts |
| STN ↔ TIA · London–Rinas | 75.94% | 55.95% | +20 pts |
| CLT ↔ SFO · Charlotte–San Francisco | 65.69% | 85.62% | -19.9 pts |
| SFO ↔ CLT · San Francisco–Charlotte | 85.62% | 65.69% | +19.9 pts |
The widest direction gaps in the record.