World’s most delayed airlines in 2025 as travelers waited 161 years for late planes to reach the gate

Flight-tracking app Flighty revealed the worst airlines for delays after analyzing data from over 22 million journeys by air globally

How many years passengers spent buckled up in planes waiting because of delays in 2025 have been revealed, and it’s Ryanair that had the biggest percentage of late flights, according to a new report.

After analyzing data from over 22 million journeys by air globally, flight-tracking app Flighty found that 29 percent of the Irish low-cost carrier’s services were delayed this year.

The delayed-flight percentages were the same for Easyjet (No.2) and Air France (No.3), but because Ryanair is a larger airline by passenger volume, it was responsible for more hours of delays.

The fourth-most-delayed airline was U.S. ultra-low-cost carrier Frontier, with 28 percent of its flights delayed, followed by Lufthansa in fifth (26 percent) and Qantas in sixth (26 percent).

Delays cost passengers and airlines billions of dollars a year. Frontier was the most delayed U.S. airline of 2025, according to a new report, but Ryanair was the tardiest globally (Photo by Matt Nager)

The top 10 was rounded out by KLM (No.7/25 percent), Air Canada (No.8/25 percent), JetBlue (No.9/25 percent) and Southwest Airlines (No.10/25 percent).

The fourth and fifth worst-delayed U.S. airlines were American Airlines (24 percent) and Alaska Airlines (23 percent), the agency found.

In its report, Flighty also looked at the gap between a flight's scheduled arrival and when passengers actually got off the plane, revealing how long passengers spent waiting for their aircraft to reach the gate after arriving in the airspace above the airport or after touching down.

It claimed that holding patterns, crew or equipment delays, taxiway congestion, runway queues and weather restrictions extended the travel time of 30 percent of all flights.

That's a collective waiting time, said Flighty, of 1.4 million hours or 161 years.

Flighty said that holding patterns, crew or equipment delays, taxiway congestion, runway queues and weather restrictions extended the travel time of 30 percent of all flights (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Flighty said in a statement: “[This metric] captures all those extra minutes spent sitting, waiting, and muttering, ‘Get me off this plane.’”

Delayed flights don't just cost time, they have a financial impact, research showed.

According to the International Air Transport Association and Eurocontrol, air traffic control delays alone cost passengers and airlines in Europe around $6.8 billion between late 2024 and October 2025.