New York: South American carrier Azul Brazilian Airlines, in 2022, had the best on-time performance globally, according to a new report by aviation analytics firm Cirium. In 2022, Azul Brazilian operated nearly 280,000 flights and 88.93 per cent of them arrived within 15 minutes of its scheduled time at the gate, as per Cirium's performance measure.

Elsewhere in South America, Chile's LATAM Airlines (86.31 per cent punctuality across over 450,000 flights) took fourth place on Cirium's ranking of international airlines and Colombia's Avianca (83.48 per cent and nearly 145,000 flights) was sixth.

For the second year in a row, the United States of America’s Delta Airlines made fifth place on the global leaderboard, an impressive 83.63 per cent of its million-plus flights were on time.

United Airlines (80.46 per cent) was in eighth place and American Airlines (78.29 per cent) at No 10, while Southwest lagged behind with 74.06 per cent.

Asia-Pacific was considerably slower to open up air travel post-Covid compared to the rest of the world. Japan reopened its international borders in October and two of its airlines -- All Nippon Airways (88.61 per cent) and Japan Airlines 88.00 per cent -- were No 2 and No 3 on Cirium's leaderboard.

It was a big year for travel to the Middle East, with the delayed Expo 2020 Dubai and FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 both taking place, but Emirates (at No 7) and Qatar Airways (at No 10) rose to the challenge well.