Yes, the old advice holds up. Over the 12 months to August 2026, an aircraft’s first flight of the day left under 15 minutes late 88.1% of the time, against 73.5% for every later flight. Before 9 AM it was 90.9%. Between 5 PM and 8:59 PM it was 66.5%.
If you have a choice and a reason to be somewhere, book the morning flight and set the alarm.
By the hour
This is every US domestic flight in public records for those 12 months, about 7 million of them, by scheduled hour.
| Scheduled departure | Left under 15 min late | Left 60+ min late | Cancelled |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 AM | 92.6% | 3.2% | 1.6% |
| 6 AM | 92.0% | 3.4% | 1.9% |
| 7 AM | 89.9% | 3.8% | 1.6% |
| 8 AM | 87.6% | 4.4% | 1.5% |
| 10 AM | 82.0% | 5.8% | 1.6% |
| Noon | 77.2% | 7.5% | 1.6% |
| 2 PM | 72.6% | 9.5% | 1.7% |
| 4 PM | 69.3% | 11.2% | 2.0% |
| 6 PM | 66.4% | 13.0% | 2.4% |
| 8 PM | 64.4% | 13.7% | 2.5% |
| 10 PM | 68.9% | 11.2% | 2.8% |
The slide runs from dawn to about 8 PM with hardly a pause. Each hour is a bit worse than the one before it. The tail matters more than the average: a 6 PM flight is about four times as likely as a 6 AM one to leave an hour or more late.
It isn’t about the clock, though. Of flights before 9 AM, 83% are the plane’s first of the day, and the small group that aren’t do worse: 7 AM flights by a plane that has already flown left under 15 minutes late 85.2% of the time, against 90.7% for first flights.
Why it works
The plane is already there. By my count, the delay reasons on first flights look nothing like the ones later on.
| Reported cause | First flight of the day | Later flights |
|---|---|---|
| Airline (crew, maintenance and so on) | 55% | 28% |
| Late aircraft | 16% | 45% |
| National aviation system | 22% | 21% |
| Extreme weather | 7% | 6% |
These are shares of delay minutes on flights that arrived 15 or more minutes late. The late aircraft share collapses and the airline share jumps. First flights take away the commonest failure, and what’s left is a crew that isn’t there or a fault found on the walk-around. Those still happen. About 1 in 21 first flights left an hour or more late. Later flights: about 1 in 11.
Fewer first flights get cancelled too: 1.31% against 1.75%.
Where it matters most
The advantage is small at some airports and enormous at others. This compares first flights before 9 AM with all flights leaving 5 to 8:59 PM, at the 30 busiest airports.
| Airport | First flights, on time | Evening flights, on time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dallas Love | 93.4% | 49.3% | 44 pts |
| Chicago Midway | 92.0% | 56.5% | 36 pts |
| Nashville | 90.1% | 56.4% | 34 pts |
| Orlando | 92.2% | 58.8% | 33 pts |
| Boston | 90.9% | 58.4% | 33 pts |
| Denver | 92.9% | 64.7% | 28 pts |
| O’Hare | 88.9% | 63.0% | 26 pts |
| Dallas-Fort Worth | 85.6% | 61.8% | 24 pts |
| Atlanta | 89.4% | 69.3% | 20 pts |
| Seattle | 89.9% | 74.5% | 15 pts |
| Los Angeles | 89.7% | 74.6% | 15 pts |
| Salt Lake City | 92.6% | 78.7% | 14 pts |
Love Field’s evening number is the one that surprised me. Fewer than half of its flights between 5 and 8:59 PM left under 15 minutes late. Southwest flies 98% of Love Field’s flights and 94% of Midway’s, and it had the lowest evening score of any airline, 54.6%. Its turns are short, with a median of 45 scheduled minutes on the ground against 60 to 72 at American, Delta and United, so a slip early in the day has little room to recover. That’s my reading: the records show the numbers and don’t show the reason.
Dallas-Fort Worth has the weakest first-flight score on this list, at 85.6%, so the morning flight isn’t a guarantee there.
The month matters as well. First flights left on time 91.2% of the time in September, and 85.1% in December, with July and March close behind it. Sunday and Monday are the weakest days, at about 86.5%, and Wednesday is the best at 89.9%.
The catch
An early flight has a catch that doesn’t show up in these tables. The 5 and 6 AM hours are when security is at its worst, so you may give back in the line what you gained at the gate. It’s still the right trade for most people, since you’re choosing a slower morning over a delay that could run into hours.
If you have to fly late in the day, look at where your plane is a couple of hours ahead. By then the day’s delays are already on the board, one way or another.
How I counted
“First flight” means the aircraft’s first scheduled departure of the local calendar date, by tail number. A plane that arrived on a red-eye and leaves again that morning would count, which is rare enough not to matter: requiring at least eight scheduled hours since the previous departure moves the figure from 88.1% to 87.9%. “On time” here means leaving the gate under 15 minutes after schedule, which is the DOT’s usual line, applied to departures. Cancelled and diverted flights are out of the on-time columns.
These are domestic flights by the large US airlines and their regional partners, September 2025 to August 2026. It’s one year, with its own weather. It says what happened to flights in general, and it can’t tell you about a specific flight on a specific day. Schedule changes also shift which flights are first.
What sits behind those late flights is in the five delay reasons.
If you’re on a later flight, Skycap shows where your plane is coming from. When it can tell why the flight is late, it says so in one line. How delays work in the app