The world's most delayed airline for 2025 revealed

The world's most delayed airline of the year has been revealed - and it's a budget UK airline.

Flighty, a flight tracking app, has released its 2025 Global Passport Report revealing which airlines are the most delayed, based on its users' journeys.

In 2025, Flighty users took over 22 million flights for a cumulative 78 million hours in the air. 

And each day, the app tracks individual schedules, inbound planes, and historic flight performances to calculate, confirm, and instantly alert each user when their specific flight is delayed.  

It found that passengers lost a whopping 3.9 million hours in delays in 2025.

And the world's worst culprit for delays? Ryanair, along with easyJet and Air France.

With 29 per cent of their flights delayed, they're in joint first place for the most delayed airlines among Flighty users.

In fourth place is Frontier Airlines, with 28 per cent of its flights delayed - making it the United States' worst airline for delays.

With 26 per cent of flights delayed, Lufthansa and Qantas come in joint fifth place.

Then rounding off the top 10, in joint tenth place are KLM Royal Dutch, Air Canada, JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines, all with 25 per cent of their flights delayed. 

A separate metric in Flighty's report also measures the 'lost time' between a flight’s scheduled arrival and when passengers actually got off the plane. 

Things like runway congestion, taxiing, unavailable gates, and holding patterns typically account for this gap.

It found that, in 2025, three out of 10 flights tracked by Flighty were extended, accounting for six million flights. 

The total extra time spent sitting and waiting to get to the gate added up to 1.4 million hours, or about 14 extra minutes per flight.

It comes following the news that one in three passengers is likely to face flight delays in the run-up to the big day.

Multiple strikes have already been confirmed, including approximately 200 check-in and baggage handling workers employed by DHL at London Luton Airport, who are set to strike during the final two weekends of December amid an ongoing pay row.

Strikes are also set to hit passengers flying with Scandinavian Airlines from Heathrow airport as more than 130 cabin crew are taking strike action.

Meanwhile, Heathrow Airport is bracing itself to handle 7million passengers across its four terminals throughout the festive period.

National Rail has confirmed there will be 'planned essential engineering works and upgrades taking place as Network Rail works to improve the railway' over the festive period.

Ahead of this year’s turbulent festive flying period, AirHelp has shared its top tips for achieving the smoothest possible travel experience.