Canceled Flights: Here’s How Many Flights Europe’s Airlines Cancel!

Canceled Flights: Here’s How Many Flights Europe’s Airlines Cancel

• Flop 3 Airlines With Highest Cancellation Rates In Detail
• Flop 20 Airlines With Most Canceled Flights
• Flop 20 Airlines With Highest Cancellation Rate
• Top 20 Airlines With Fewest Canceled Flights
• Top 20 Airlines With Lowest Cancellation Rate

Canceled Flights vs. Cancellation Rate

With this blog post, we focus on two indicators to evaluate how many flights Europe’s airlines cancel: The number of canceled flights and the cancellation rate. Although the cancellation rate incorporates the number of flights, the overall results can differ. So here’s to explain both indicators quickly:

• Number of Canceled Flights: Counts the amount of flights an airline canceled during a specific period.
• Cancellation Rate: Puts the number of canceled flights in relation with operated flights.

As a result, the cancellation rate provides the probability of a flight cancellation when choosing a specific airline — at least retrospectively. However, subsequently, a large number of canceled flights does not necessarily lead to a high cancelation rate as long as the airline performs many overall flights.

Used Data

The shown information is based on OAG data and internal data sources. Moreover, the shown results in terms of flights and cancelation rates reflect data for June 2021. Moreover, the ranking only included airlines that operated more than 500 flights in June.

Flop 3 Airlines With Highest Cancellation Rates In Detail

Before we dive into the top and worst performers’ detailed ranking in terms of flight cancellation, we want to introduce June’s Flop 3 airlines concerning the cancellation rate.

#1 — Edelweiss Air

It seems like the Swiss carrier had enormous problems in June. With more than 350 canceled flights, the member of the Lufthansa Group reported a cancellation rate of 34.6%. In other words, Edelweiss Air had to cancel more than every third flight in the last month. The carrier focuses on European and especially international holiday destinations. Therefore, it will be interesting to see how Edelweiss’s performance continues in July.

#2 — Aer Lingus

Ireland’s flag-carrier, Aer Lingus, wins the ungrateful silver medal of Europe’s airlines with the highest cancellation rate in June 2021. However, compared to Edelweiss Air on position one, Aer Lingus did much better. Out of 1,500 flights, Aer Lingus had to cancel approximately 250. Accordingly, the cancellation rate results in 16.6%.

#3 — Icelandair

The third position concerning Europe’s airline with most canceled flights goes to Iceland’s flag-carrier Icelandair. However, worth mentioning that Icelandair’s performance is much better than Edelweiss Air but also Aer Lingus. Icelandair had to cancel around 85 flights out of more than 1,300 operated flights. Accordingly, the cancellation rate results in 6.5%

Flop 20 Airlines With Most Canceled Flights

Air France wins the unwanted gold medal when looking at the European airlines with the most canceled flights. In absolute number, the French flag carrier canceled more flights than any other European airline in June. Moreover, the gap between Air France on first and Edelweiss Air on the second position is significant: Air France canceled almost 1,500 flights compared to 363 of Edelweiss.

With KLM and Aer Lingus, we have two other flag carriers among the top 5 European airlines with the most canceled flights. KLM had to cancel 267 flights in June, whereas Aer Lingus canceled 250. Wideroe, Loganair, and British Airways complete the list of European airlines that canceled more than 100 flights in June.

When looking at ranks 12 to 20, the number of cancellations is already relatively low. Especially for Ryanair, Easyjet, and Lufthansa, the number of cancellations is low compared to the number of operated flights.

Rank	IATA	Airline	No. Flights	Canceled Flights
1	AF	Air France	22,565	1,444
2	WK	Edelweiss Air	1,048	363
3	KL	KLM	12,708	267
4	EI	Aer Lingus	1,504	250
5	WF	Wideroe’s	8,910	196
6	LM	Loganair	3,238	136
7	BA	British Airways	6,714	114
8	W6	Wizz Air	11,441	92
9	FI	Icelandair	1,312	85
10	SK	SAS	7,660	69
11	0B	Blue Air	2,377	48
12	FR	Ryanair	38,355	38
13	U2	Easyjet	12,310	37
14	W9	Wizz Air UK	653	35
15	V7	Volotea	4,911	34
16	FL	Air Leap	599	34
17	LH	Lufthansa	16,088	32
18	JU	Air Serbia	1,640	28
19	LX	Swiss	3,915	20
20	TO	Transavia	3,250	16

Flop 20 Airlines With Highest Cancellation Rate

We find Edelweiss Air, Aer Lingus, and Icelandair on the first three ranks concerning the European airlines with the highest cancellation rate. Since the cancellation rate incorporates the overall number of flights, the ranking looks quite different from the above one:

• Air France is no longer in the top 3 and ranks 4th with a cancellation rate of 6.4%.
• Big players, such as Lufthansa, Ryanair, or Easyjet are no longer contained in the ranking.
• Smaller airlines, such as Loganair, Air Leap, Croatia Airlines, or SATA ranks as European’s airlines with high cancellation rates — mainly due to relatively low amount of flights.

However, and worth mentioning that even airlines that rank among the Flop 20 show cancellation rates of below 1% — which is actually relatively good.

Rank	IATA	Airline	Cancellation Rate
1	WK	Edelweiss Air	34.6%
2	EI	Aer Lingus	16.6%
3	FI	Icelandair	6.5%
4	AF	Air France	6.4%
5	FL	Air Leap	5.7%
6	W9	Wizz Air UK	5.4%
7	LM	Loganair	4.2%
8	WF	Wideroe’s	2.2%
9	KL	KLM	2.1%
10	0B	Blue Air	2.0%
11	BA	British Airways	1.7%
12	JU	Air Serbia	1.7%
13	SK	SAS	0.9%
14	OU	Croatia Airlines	0.9%
15	W6	Wizz Air	0.8%
16	X3	TUIfly	0.8%
17	XK	Air Corsica	0.8%
18	SP	SATA Air Acores	0.8%
19	V7	Volotea	0.7%
20	DX	DAT	0.6%

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Top 20 Airlines With Fewest Canceled Flights

Amazing to see that nine European airlines did not cancel a single flight in June. However, the rest of the top 20 airlines showed an extraordinary performance: Even the airlines ranked on position 17-20 canceled only five flights in the course of June.

Rank	IATA	Airline	No. Flights	Canceled Flights
1	AZ	Alitalia	6,177	0
2	OA	Olympic Air	4,804	0
3	HV	Transavia.com	2,565	0
4	AY	Finnair	2,304	0
5	BT	Air Baltic	1,735	0
6	DE	Condor	1,533	0
7	RO	Tarom	1,370	0
8	B2	Belavia	661	0
9	EN	Air Dolomiti	548	0
10	PS	Ukraine International	1,047	1
11	DY	Norwegian	2,176	2
12	A3	Aegean Airlines	2,267	2
13	UX	Air Europa	3,129	3
14	S4	SATA International	544	3
15	LG	Luxair	1,152	3
16	GQ	Sky Express	3,608	4
17	TP	TAP	5,126	5
18	SN	Brussels Airlines	2,572	5
19	EW	Eurowings	5,246	5
20	QS	SmartWings	1,313	5

Top 20 Airlines With Lowest Cancellation Rate

Let’s look at the other side of the medal and discover European airlines with the lowest cancellation rates. Amazing to see that nine European airlines did not cancel a single flight in June. Accordingly, we ranked the airlines concerning the number of flights — meaning if two airlines have the identical cancelation rate, the airline with more flights ranks higher.

Besides nine carriers with a cancelation rate of 0%, ten more airlines show a meager rate of 0.1%. Only one airline (Brussels Airline) has a higher cancelation rate than 0.1%. Also interesting to see that Ryanair ranks in the list of the airlines with the most cancellations and the list with the lowest cancellation rates. What first seems to be a mistake is simply linked to the enormous amount flights Ryanair performs.

Rank	IATA	Airline	Cancelation Rate
1	AZ	Alitalia	0.0%
2	OA	Olympic Air	0.0%
3	HV	Transavia.com	0.0%
4	AY	Finnair	0.0%
5	BT	Air Baltic	0.0%
6	DE	Condor	0.0%
7	RO	Tarom	0.0%
8	B2	Belavia	0.0%
9	EN	Air Dolomiti	0.0%
10	PS	Ukraine International	0.1%
11	DY	Norwegian	0.1%
12	A3	Aegean	0.1%
13	UX	Air Europa	0.1%
14	GQ	Sky Express	0.1%
15	TP	TAP	0.1%
16	EW	Eurowings	0.1%
17	VY	Vueling	0.1%
18	IB	Iberia	0.1%
19	FR	Ryanair	0.1%
20	SN	Brussels Airlines	0.2%

Canceled Flights — What Do You Think?

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