Cirium’s On-Time Performance is the industry standard

SEE CURRENT OTP REPORTS, HERE. SEE HISTORIC RESULTS BELOW.

Measuring airline on time performance

The basic measurements are:

• D0: Departures exactly on time or early
• A0: Arrivals exactly on time or early
• A14: Arrivals within 15 minutes of scheduled time
• B0: Flights operating in scheduled block time (gate to gate)

How Cirium measures airport and airline on-time performance

Cirium has a proven track record of reporting on OTP results for more than 14 years – the longest of anyone in the industry. So, based on our historical experience, we have some authority in this area. We try to stay true to the industry definitions of OTP and make sure we represent the data in a transparent and consistent way.

How Cirium data delivers the true OTP story

And precisely why data supplied by other providers doesn’t always add up…

• Total Number of Global Flights – Cirium counts individual commercially operated flights to reflect the most accurate number of scheduled flights. However, codesharing between airlines, where they market and publish a flight as part of their own schedule when it’s in fact owned and operated by a completely different airline is commonplace. But counting the total number of codeshare flights artificially inflates the flight count. It’s not accurate and it doesn’t reflect the true number of scheduled flights operated by airlines.
• Arrival OTP Metric – Cirium adheres to the industry-standard definition of on-time arrivals as flights that arrive within 15 minutes of scheduled “Gate. Arrival”. Using different arrival times other than “Gate Arrival” to measure OTP, such as runway arrival, is inaccurate and does not conform to industry standards. We know use of “Runway Arrival”time often leads to overstated OTP numbers. When Cirium reviewed another OTP provider’s method, we noticed they don’t specify that they use gate arrival time – just arrival. We suspect that they may use whatever arrival data they have, such as runway or gate. The difference between runway and gate arrival times can be anywhere between five and 30 minutes – enough to seriously skew the results. But whatever they use, the result is the same; they don’t match the true OTP and could be over-stated.
• Departure OTP Metric – As with Arrival OTP Metric, Cirium uses the industry standard departure within 15 minutes of scheduled “Gate” departure. Using departure times other than the reported “Gate” departure time is simply inaccurate.
• Calculation Method –Cirium is fanatical about data accuracy; and we make no apology for it. We calculate OTP only on flights where we have actual “Gate Arrival” or “Gate Departure” time information. When gate time data is not present for a flight then it’s excluded from out data – it’s as simple as that. To reduce the margin of error, we only publish OTP metrics for an airline when we have actual gate arrival times for a very high percentage of an airline’s scheduled flights  – 85-95% depending on the airline category.
• Data Curation –Cirium curates the flight status data for OTP from more than 600 sources of real-time flight information. This includes airline direct partnerships, airports, global distribution systems, positional data, Civil Aviation Authorities/ANSPs, proprietary data partnerships and the Web. We validate and corroborate flight information across multiple sources to ensure highest level of accuracy. This flight data is the fundamental foundation to our OTP program.