Synopsis: Chennai International Airport was ranked as the most punctual airport in India with On-time Performance (OTP) of 92.2 %. according to DGCA data. In contrast, Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport had the worst on-time performance among the ten busiest airports in the country.
It is very important that the airport is on time because it affects how easy it is for people to travel. It also affects the schedules of airlines and the overall experience of traveling, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation made a report about air traffic in India for May 2026. In this report the 10 biggest airports in India were ranked, based on how punctual they were.
What does On-Time Performance mean?
On-Time Performance basically tells us what percentage of flights take off on time, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation says that if a flight is 15 minutes late from its schedule it is considered delayed. When more flights leave on time this means that airlines are doing a job of scheduling,on-time performance is important because when flights leave on time airlines can get planes ready to fly faster, handle things on the ground and run the airport more smoothly. All of these things help make traveling easier for passengers, when airlines have good On-Time Performance it means that they are able to get flights in and out of the airport on schedule, which is good, for passengers.
India’s Top 10 Airports by On-Time Performance (May 2026)
Why Did Chennai Rank First?
Chennai International Airport did well with flights taking off on time, it had a score of 92.2 percent. This is a big deal because it means that most flights from Chennai left when they were supposed to, to be exact more than 9 out of every 10 flights took off on time in May. This airport did a lot better than big airports in the country, it was 7.5 percentage points better than Kolkata, which came in second. It was a lot better than Mumbai, which had the worst score among the top 10 airports, the people working at this airport including the airlines and the teams on the ground all worked together well which is why it had such a score for on-time flights.
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How Did Indian Airports Perform Globally?
The Cirium On-Time Performance Monthly Report for June 2026 ranked the world’s 20 punctual large airports based on scheduled departures and 3 Indian airports – Chennai, Kolkata and Bengaluru did well in the top 20, this shows that Indian airports are getting better at handling a lot of passengers. Chennai International Airport was the best among all other airports in India, it also ranked 5th in the world with 92.11% of its flights leaving on time, the airport kept track of 99.40% of its 10,716 scheduled flights, the airport has 66 routes and serves 33 airlines.
How Did Airlines Perform?
The DGCA also checked how scheduled domestic airlines did on time at 4 big airports – Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. IndiGo was the most on-time with 82.8% of flights leaving on schedule while Akasa Air came in 2nd at 78.3%. The Air India Group had 74.5% on-time flights, Alliance Air had 70.5%, SpiceJet did the worst with 26.5% of flights, on time which means most of its flights were late.
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Why Do Flights Get Delayed?
Most flight delays happen because of delayed flights, in the report we can see that the weather and technical issues can cause delays but the main issue with Domestic Air Traffic is that when one flight is late it makes the next Domestic Air Traffic flights late too.
The report for Domestic Air Traffic says that of delayed flights, about 7 out of 10 are late because an earlier flight was delayed causing Domestic Air Traffic. This creates a problem throughout the day, if airlines can get people on and off the planes faster they can reduce these Domestic Air Traffic delays.
