Top 5 Most Punctual African Airlines (2025)

Time management is such an important thing when it comes to air transport not least because of the high level of coordination necessary to pull off the activities at hand. In Africa, a couple of carriers have established themselves as the best at this attribute overtime so we will look at the five that come on top of the list.

In researching for this article on the top 5 most punctual African Airlines, I relied on rankings by some of the best independent organizations out there e.g. Cirium and Official Airline Guide (OAG).

To decide who is who, these platforms use the International Air Transportation Association of On-Time Performance (OTP) recognized standards.

OTP is basically measured dependent on whether an aeroplane leaves within 15 minutes of its schedule. If it does, then the flight will be considered to have set-off on time.

Due to factors outside a company’s control however (think of unexpected weather patterns), and in other cases bad planning, it is not always that this mark will be hit. So the tracking of which plane left when helps customers know whom to rely on.

 

1. Safair

Safair first became operational in 1965 under the name Tropair. Today it runs as an affiliate of ASL Aviation Holdings and it is undoubtedly Africa’s most punctual airline regardless of which standard you use. This because, the carrier has been severally recognized by numerous bodies as such.

As we will see, Safair is so good to the extent that time and again, it tops both Africa and the Middle East combined in the time keeping game. Indeed, when one looks at OAG’s most recent world list of rankings, Safair is the only African flier represented in the several first pages.

Consistence is another thing that the company has exhibited as its record has remained the same across years. To be more specific, here are the recognitions that the company has had; Most on-time airline in the Middle East and Africa (Cirium, 2024), Most Punctual Airline in Africa (OAG, 2022), Most-on time airline in the world (OAG, April 2017) etc.

Moving fast forward to today, here are Safair’s OTP statistics for 2025 thus far; JAN: 94.68%, FEB: 95.51%, MAR: 93.70%, APR: 94.69%, MAY: 95.45%, JUN: 92.36%. These numbers have seen the company become recognized this year already including by SkyTrax for the month of June.

The latter accolade is important not least because it is given out on account of customers’ points of view (people like you that who have tested the experience and now trust it).

This record has seen Safair win trust in the international community and accordingly, it is now heavily involved with humanitarian aid delivery both on the continent and outside.

In this endeavor, it works with entities such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, World Food Programme, as well as the United Nations.

Safair has expanded operations as it grew bigger and one of these instances was in 2014 when it commenced transportation for its low-cost brand FlySafair. FlySafair flies across shorter distances including; Johannesburg, Maputo, Port Elizabeth, Victoria Falls etc.

 

2. South African Airways

A member of the largest international airlines network, Star Alliance, South African Airways (SAA) has a long history going all the way back to 1929. Back then it was known as Union Airways.

It is special too in a sense that it continues to be owned by the government of South Africa– efforts to partially privatize it failed back in 2021.

Flightstats has published data from 57 of the planes composing the SAA fleet for the period of 1^st May- 2^nd June this year and in summary, the company has been on time in 80% of the cases and late only 14% of the instances.

The remaining figures fall in the brackets of “very late” and “excessively late” and as you can see if you do the calculating, these are much smaller brackets. Most remarkably however, there have been no diversions or cancellations whatsoever.

SAA’s highest moment in regards to punctuality however, was in 2019 when Cirium picked them for Most on-time airline in Africa for that year. As reported by Northstar Travel Media, as high as 90% of SAA flights leaving Heathrow’s Terminal Two from January all the way to December did so on time.

The then acting CEO, Zuks Ramasia was quoted as saying; “We place a high premium on punctuality as measured through OTP. It is one of our most important customer impact performance indicators.” And trusting its competencies, SAA has published her OTP performance starting from eleven years ago.

South African Airways presently travels across several destinations on the continent. It also goes to Australia as well as Brazil. It has partnered too with other players in the industry including SA Express and Airlink and also operates a low-cost carrier for smoother operations. The name of the latter is Mango.

 

3. Jambojet

Not to be confused with Jumbo jet i.e. the term usually used to playfully refer to commercial planes with wide bodies, Jambojet is a subsidiary of Kenya’s Kenya Airways purposefully incorporated in 2014 as a low-cost carrier.

Jambojet’s care for punctuality was evident from its very beginnings. Between April and October 2014 thus, the airline had recorded an impressive 85% OTP which is impressive even at the international level.

To keep up, different interventions have been introduced in the years that have ensued. Business Daily thus reported an upward spiral peaking at 90% between the months of September and October 2020 following the introduction of a new set of planes.

This standard has remained many years later. Last year, the company’s OTP averaged at 80%. Here are the particulars; JAN: 82.9%, FEB: 82%, MAR: 84.6%, APR: 76.2%, MAY: 85%, JUN: 81.7%, JUL: 76.8%, AUG: 68.2%, SEP: 82%, OCT: 84.5%, NOV: 81%, DEC: 70%.

Interestingly, as you might have noticed, this a low-cost carrier as opposed to those that we covered prior. So you do not have to part with huge sums of money to make it to your destination if you are headed for a place that Jambojet serves. As a matter of fact, its OTP record beats even that of its parent company.

The areas to which Jambojet travels are both within Kenya (Kisumu, Mombasa, Nairobi, Eldoret etc.) as well as outside (Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Comoros, Somalia, South Sudan, Madagascar, Ethiopia etc.).

 

4. Nouvelair

Founded 36 years ago as a subsidiary of the French company Air Liberté, Nouvelair has come to be one of the most successful airlines in Africa and this is thanks to the standards that it has kept all this while which among other things include on-time service. On OAG’s account, the carrier had a grading of 74.5% last month with 0% cancellations.

Other virtues that are the embodiment of Nouvelair are quality services as well as optimal service delivery. The testament of these are the company’s exponential growth. As it stands, her flights travel to at least 130 destinations spread between thirty countries. They include; Germany, France, Poland, Turkey, Denmark, Saudi Arabia etc.

Back home, Nouvelair’s registered offices are in Tunis but the headquarters are located in Monastir. Her bases are spread across two international airports in the mentioned places (Carthage and Habib Bourguiba) and a third in Djerba (Zarzis).

 

5. Kenya Airways

First coming into existence in 1977, Kenya Airways (KA) has continued to dominate the flights industry in Africa including when it comes to punctuality. The fact that both its low-cost carrier and KA itself are part of this list is testament to that indeed.

One of the carrier’s most memorable milestones as far as time keeping goes came in January 2024 when Cirium announced that KA had emerged second in the category of Most on-time airline for the aggregate of 2023 OTP– it was only beaten by Safair.

At the same time, KA had emerged 10^th best across Africa and the Middle East. Receiving the news, the company CEO Allan Kilavuka remarked that the achievement was testament to KA’s commitment to “improving… on-time performance and our dedication to implementing real improvements on board…”

The airline has also exhibited a remarkable spirit for corporation including membership to the Sky Team, Africa Shared Values Initiative, as well as UN Global Compact. It is no wonder there has been impeccable progress made at Kenya Airways.

Most recently, a direct flight from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Gatwick Airport, London became operational.