SA airline Safair wins global award

South African airline Safair has won a major international accolade for its on-time arrivals performance – bettered only by one other airline surveyed by global aviation data and analysis company Cirium.

Safair was also awarded for being the best low-cost carrier globally in terms on on-time arrivals.

An on-time flight is defined as a flight that arrives within 15 minutes of the scheduled gate arrival.

On-time arrivals percentage of 92.36% for last year

In Safair’s case, the Cirium analysis showed an on-time arrivals percentage of 92.36% for last year, just behind the leading airline, Oman Air, which produced a 92.53% figure.

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Kirby Gordon, chief marketing officer at Safair, said: “On-time performance has always been a cornerstone that we’ve built the airline on.

“It’s been challenging to keep that quality while managing fairly significant growth but we’re proud of the teams for this great achievement.”

The Cirium awards analyses hundreds of thousands of flights across the globe and over the year and hands out its accolades in different categories.

Safair was runner-up in on time departures

Safair was runner-up in on time departures in the Middle East and African category, second to Oman Air.

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However, it was praised at the best low-cost carrier in the world in terms of on-time arrivals.

Cirium gave its platinum award to American carrier Delta Air Lines – which won it for the third year running – for what the citation said was “a demonstration of its commitment to operational performance and minimising passenger disruption”.

Cirium’s on-time performance programme monitors global airline operational performance, based on “extensive and unbiased data, derived from over 600 real-time information sources”.

No top performing airports in Africa

The report also highlighted the world’s top performing airports – none of which were in Africa.

An airport is assessed on its on-time departures, a measure of how effective its infrastructure is at enabling planes to leave on time.