Spirit had the worst on-time rate of any major US carrier in the first half of 2026, and the worst cancellation rate by a wide margin — a decline that ended in the airline's complete shutdown. Allegiant came out on top.
Every US airline publishes its own version of how good its service is. The Department of Transportation publishes a different version — one built from mandatory monthly filings, not marketing copy. We pulled the DOT's most recent Air Travel Consumer Report, covering January through June 2026, and combined four of its metrics into a single ranking: on-time arrivals, flight cancellations, mishandled baggage, and involuntary bumping.
Spirit Airlines finished last, and by a wide margin. It posted the worst on-time rate of the nine major carriers — 59.84%, nearly 21 points below Alaska, the best performer — and the worst cancellation rate of any carrier, at 7.47% of scheduled flights, more than triple the next-worst airline. Allegiant Air finished first, helped by the lowest cancellation rate and lowest baggage mishandling rate in the group, even though it wasn't the most punctual airline outright.
We ranked each airline 1st to 9th in each of the four categories, then averaged the four ranks to produce a single composite score. Lower is better.
| Rank | Airline | On-time % | Cancelled % | Baggage mishandled /100 | Bumped /10,000 | Composite score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Allegiant Air | 72.71 | 0.90 | 0.12 | 0.00 | 2.50 |
| 2 | Delta Air Lines | 79.33 | 2.35 | 0.37 | 0.00 | 3.25 |
| 2 | Southwest Airlines | 74.76 | 1.05 | 0.32 | 0.01 | 3.25 |
| 4 | Alaska Airlines | 80.51 | 1.24 | 0.53 | 0.09 | 4.25 |
| 5 | United Airlines | 77.60 | 1.76 | 0.69 | 0.01 | 4.75 |
| 6 | JetBlue Airways | 71.02 | 2.86 | 0.31 | 0.07 | 5.50 |
| 7 | Frontier Airlines | 72.06 | 1.99 | 0.51 | 1.42 | 6.75 |
| 8 | American Airlines | 74.38 | 3.32 | 0.67 | 0.52 | 7.00 |
| 9 | Spirit Airlines | 59.84 | 7.47 | 0.47 | 0.91 | 7.75 |
The composite score rewards consistency, which hides how differently airlines get to a good or bad ranking. Some carriers win by dominating one metric; others, like Allegiant, win by never being the worst at anything.
| Category | Best | Worst |
|---|---|---|
| On-time rate | Alaska Airlines (80.51%) | Spirit Airlines (59.84%) |
| Cancellation rate | Allegiant Air (0.90%) | Spirit Airlines (7.47%) |
| Mishandled baggage | Allegiant Air (0.12 /100) | United Airlines (0.69 /100) |
| Involuntary bumping | Delta & Allegiant (0.00 /10,000) | Frontier Airlines (1.42 /10,000) |
Allegiant's composite #1 finish doesn't come from winning outright anywhere except baggage and bumping — it wasn't the most punctual airline in the group. It won by avoiding bad outcomes everywhere else, which is a different (and arguably more useful for a nervous flyer) kind of reliability than topping any single metric.
Allegiant's top position doesn't come from being the most punctual — it wasn't. Alaska Airlines had the best on-time rate in the group, at 80.51%. Allegiant won on consistency across the other three categories: it cancelled fewer flights than anyone else, mishandled the least baggage, and recorded zero involuntary bumpings for the period.
Spirit's result is driven almost entirely by two categories, and both point to the same underlying story: the airline was in terminal decline throughout H1 2026. On May 2, 2026, Spirit ceased all operations and began an orderly wind-down after failing to secure a $500 million federal bailout — its second bankruptcy filing in under two years. That's why Spirit's on-time data simply stops after May and shows "N/A" for June in the DOT's tables: there were no more Spirit flights to report.
American Airlines and Frontier Airlines round out the bottom three. American's weakest area was its cancellation rate (3.32%, more than double Delta's), while Frontier's outlier is bumping — its involuntary denied-boarding rate of 1.42 per 10,000 passengers was the highest of any carrier in the group, more than double American's (the next-worst) and dramatically higher than Delta and Allegiant, which recorded zero involuntary bumps for the period.
Averages can hide a slide that was already visible in real time. Spirit's on-time rate for every month it operated in 2026:
| Month | Spirit on-time % | Industry average % |
|---|---|---|
| January | 66.6 | 75.3 |
| February | 62.8 | 78.5 |
| March | 48.4 | 73.4 |
| April | 63.0 | 79.2 |
| May | 58.8 | 77.8 |
| June | N/A — ceased operations May 2 | 73.1 |
Spirit was already the worst-performing major carrier in January, before its bankruptcy filing became public, and never once matched the industry average in any month it operated. March was its low point — under 50% on-time, nearly 25 points below the industry that month — coinciding with the period the airline was actively negotiating creditor and bailout terms.
Year-over-year comparisons separate airlines having a genuinely bad half-year from airlines that are simply, consistently mediocre. We calculated both the raw percentage-point change and the relative percentage change for every carrier's cancellation rate — they tell different stories, and conflating them overstates or understates what actually happened.
| Airline | Cancellation rate, H1 2025 | Cancellation rate, H1 2026 | Change (points) | Change (relative) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Allegiant Air | 0.55% | 0.90% | +0.35 pp | +63.6% |
| Southwest Airlines | 0.95% | 1.05% | +0.10 pp | +10.5% |
| Alaska Airlines | 0.98% | 1.24% | +0.26 pp | +26.5% |
| United Airlines | 1.35% | 1.76% | +0.41 pp | +30.4% |
| Frontier Airlines | 1.85% | 1.99% | +0.14 pp | +7.6% |
| Delta Air Lines | 1.22% | 2.35% | +1.13 pp | +92.6% |
| JetBlue Airways | 1.04% | 2.86% | +1.82 pp | +175.0% |
| American Airlines | 2.69% | 3.32% | +0.63 pp | +23.4% |
| Spirit Airlines | 1.41% | 7.47% | +6.06 pp | +429.8% |
Every major carrier's cancellation rate got worse in H1 2026 versus H1 2025 — industry-wide, the cancellation rate rose from 1.57% to 2.23%. But the shape of that decline varies enormously. JetBlue's relative increase (+175%) is larger than Delta's, Alaska's, or United's, even though JetBlue's absolute rate (2.86%) is still lower than Spirit's or American's. Spirit is the outlier by both measures at once — the only carrier where cancellations more than quintupled.
On-time performance moved in both directions: Alaska (+2.79 points), Delta (+0.63), American (+1.03), and Frontier (+2.05) all improved year over year, while Southwest (-4.15), Allegiant (-2.11), JetBlue (-3.47), and Spirit (-18.50) got worse. Spirit's decline dwarfs every other carrier's by an order of magnitude.
Composite ranks and percentages can undersell how large these gaps actually are in practice. A few direct comparisons:
A composite score built from four DOT metrics is useful, but it has real limits worth stating plainly:
Source: the DOT Office of Aviation Consumer Protection's Air Travel Consumer Report, August 2026 edition, which reports on flight operations and complaints from June 2026 and year-to-date figures for January through June 2026.
We used four tables directly from that report, all covering the nine US carriers required to report data (each holding at least 0.5% of total domestic scheduled-service passenger revenue):
For each metric, airlines were ranked 1st (best) through 9th (worst). The four ranks were averaged to produce each airline's composite score; a lower score means a better overall record across all four categories equally weighted. We didn't weight any single category more heavily than the others — a reader who cares more about punctuality than baggage handling should look at the individual columns in the table above rather than the composite alone.
Monthly on-time figures come from Table 1B of the same report. Year-over-year comparison figures come directly from the same-period columns DOT publishes alongside each YTD table (Tables 1C and 6B), not from a separate calculation against last year's report.
One limitation worth stating plainly: this reflects six months of data, not a full year, and covers domestic operations by marketing carrier (which for some airlines includes regional codeshare partners operating under their brand). We'll revisit this ranking once full-year 2026 data is available — Spirit will no longer appear in that edition, since it ceased operating entirely partway through the year.
None of this tells you whether a specific flight will be on time — DOT data is an airline-wide average, not a prediction for your route. But if punctuality and cancellation risk matter more to you than price on a close call between carriers, this is the most current independent comparison available, and it updates monthly.
If you've already been affected by a cancellation, denied boarding, or long delay, US airlines don't owe you the same fixed cash compensation as EU or UK carriers — but you may be entitled to a refund or specific protections depending on what happened. If your flight was booked on Spirit and never operated because of the shutdown, your recovery options depend on how you paid — check your card issuer's dispute process and any travel insurance separately, since Spirit itself is no longer processing customer service requests.
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