North American airlines face significant disruptions in June

In North America, 2.7% of all disruptions among tier 1 carriers—airlines with more than 17,000 flights per month and 25 million passengers per year—were major delays and cancellations.

Globally, there was a 23.3% month-on-month increase in medium (between one and three hours) and major delays (more than three hours) and cancellations, impacting 8.8 million more passengers in June.

In Asia-Pacific, 2.1% of all planned flights experienced major delays affecting around 3 million passengers. In Europe, increasing major delays and cancellations resulted in around 1.3 million travelers being eligible for compensation under EU261 regulations.

The data also revealed that American Airlines suffered the most disruption during the month with 30.7% of services facing disruption. Spirit Airlines and JetBlue were just behind with around 27% of their services disrupted.

Meanwhile, Hawaiian Airlines was the best-performing airline among major carriers in the region with just 15.3% of services disrupted; Delta followed closely with a disruption rate of 19.2%.

Among tier-2 carriers—airlines with between 6,500 to 17,000 flights per month carrying between 10 million to 25 million passengers per year—the best performers were Aeromexico (13.6%), PSA Airlines (17.6%), and Endeavor Air (21.3%).

Conversely, Frontier Airlines had a total disruption rate of 35.1%, making it one of the worst-performing carriers alongside Air Canada (31.1%) and WestJet (30.5%). WestJet’s operations were notably impacted by a strike involving its maintenance and engineering technicians represented by the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA).

Plan3 advertises its platform as offering airlines solutions to bundle travel or stay options for affected travelers including new flights or accommodations.

The company sourced data from FlightAware using definitions from United States Bureau of Transportation Statistics which considers any flight exceeding its scheduled gate arrival time by over fourteen minutes as delayed.

It estimated affected passengers through conservative estimations based on those requiring assistance ranging from updates to full rebooking or accommodation needs while assuming an average load factor of eighty percent.