Chennai to Lucknow: where Air India’s punctuality is strongest and weakest

Air India’s punctuality varies significantly depending on the airport, according to India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, which tracks on-time performance of scheduled domestic airlines at ten major airports including Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Kochi, Guwahati and Lucknow.

In May, the most recent month for which DGCA data is available, Air India had its best punctuality record at Chennai, where 89.5% of its flights departed on time. Its worst performance was in Lucknow, where only 62.4% of flights departed on time. Overall, the Air India Group posted an on-time performance of 74.5% in May, placing third domestically behind IndiGo and Akasa Air.

The figures come as Air India was separately ranked the world’s fourth most on-time airline for June by aviation analytics firm Cirium, recording an on-time arrival rate of 86.85% across 15,135 tracked flights globally. The airline attributed its improvement to investments in “operational resilience, improved network planning, and enhanced execution across its domestic and international operations.”

Air India said congestion and air traffic control restrictions at Delhi and Mumbai airports, two of its busiest hubs, can have a cascading impact across its wider network, complicating efforts to keep punctuality consistent across all the cities it serves.