Icelandair maintained its position as Europe¡¯s most punctual airline in July, according to the latest monthly figures from aviation analyst Cirium.

The Nordic carrier achieved an on-time performance (OTP) rate of 81.4 per cent last month, which was still the best of any European airline, despite falling by more than four percentage points from its June performance.

SAS was the second-best European performer with an OTP of 81 per cent, followed by Turkish Airlines (77.2 per cent), Finnair (75 per cent) and Iberia (75 per cent).

The list of the most punctual global airlines was dominated by carriers from Latin America and the Middle East, with Aeromexico taking top spot with an OTP of 89.8 per cent in July, followed by Brazil¡¯s Azul (87.9 per cent), Saudia (87.6 per cent), Qatar Airways (85.8 per cent) and LATAM (82.1 per cent).

Cirium¡¯s figures also showed that July was another ¡°turbulent¡± month for air travel with the total number of flight cancellations exceeding 58,000 globally. This was 5 per cent higher than the number of cancellations in May, although it was a significant improvement on June¡¯s performance, which was impacted by the 12-day war between Israel and Iran.

In Europe, there were 10,640 cancelled flights in July ¨C up by 29.5 per cent on June¡¯s figure of 8,315 cancellations. There was an even larger month-on-month rise in North America where July¡¯s cancellations rose by 42 per cent to nearly 20,000 flights.

Only one European airport featured in Cirium¡¯s list of the top 20 most on-time large airports in July ¨C Oslo in Norway was ranked in 18^th place with an OTP of 80.6 per cent. The top two major airports for punctuality globally were Bengaluru and Chennai in India.