Guide
Flying in November: a punctual month with a cancellation problem
November 2025 ran 79.4% on time, above the year's 77.3%, yet it cancelled more flights than most months. Veterans Day week shows why, airport by airport.
November 2025 looks like a good month if you only read the on-time rate. Flights that operated arrived on time 79.4% of the time, better than the 77.3% the full year from September 2025 to August 2026 managed. Yet November also cancelled more of its schedule than all but a few months in the data, well above the year's 1.89%. Those two facts are connected.
The connection is the most useful thing to understand about flying in November, and it is why I never read a November on-time table on its own.
A punctual month on the on-time table
US average 79.4%
60.0%90.0%
Flights departing each airport in November 2025, scored on arrival. The dashed line is the national November figure. Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
Salt Lake City (SLC) led at 86.5%. The surprise in the top rows is Denver in November, which ran 84.7% on time against 76.6% for its year. Denver's best month of the whole year was November, and both United at Denver and Southwest at Denver ran far above their usual level there. The summer storms were long gone and the heavy winter snow had not arrived. Denver's November cancellation rate was also about double its annual 0.78%, so a thinner schedule, the subject of the next section, may have helped here too.
At the other end, New York (LGA) came last at 67.9%, followed by Washington National in November at 72.7% and O'Hare at 73.3%. The median airport ran 80.4%.
Why the cancellations went up and the delays did not
The federal government shutdown that began on 1 October 2025 ran until 12 November. Air traffic controllers kept working without pay, and as staffing strained, the FAA ordered airlines to cut a share of their flights at around 40 of the busiest airports from 7 November. The order was lifted in the days after the shutdown ended.
That is a planned reduction, not a storm, and it shapes the data in a specific way. Airlines chose which flights to drop, days ahead, and the carrier figures below suggest they mostly dropped the ones easiest to spare: short regional legs into hubs where passengers could be moved to another departure. The flights that remained likely flew into less crowded airspace, with fewer aircraft competing for the same runways. Cancellations rose; delays on the surviving flights did not. Across November the air traffic system category took a larger share of delay minutes than in any other month of the year, but the total delay was modest.
The airport-month pages show where the cuts landed. O'Hare in November, Midway and Newark all cancelled well above their usual share. Midway's November rate was about three times its annual 1.52%, and O'Hare's about double its already high 2.80%. Some of Chicago's total belongs to the end of the month instead. Over Thanksgiving week O'Hare and Midway cancelled far more of their flights than any other large airport, and nationally that week's cancellations were concentrated on the Saturday and Sunday after the holiday, which is consistent with the snowstorm that reached Chicago that weekend.
Two different causes, one planned and one not, stacked into the same monthly figure. The Thanksgiving guide covers the holiday week itself.
Veterans Day: the week the cuts peaked
During the holidayNormal weeks either side
70.0%95.0%
All US flights. Normal weeks are the two weeks either side of the window, excluding other holidays. Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
Veterans Day is normally one of the easiest windows of the autumn. In 2023 it ran 89.1% on time and in 2024 89.8%, both above their surrounding weeks. The 2025 window, 10 to 12 November, fell at the height of the flight reductions. It ran 78.0% on time against 79.8% in the normal weeks either side, 1.8 points worse, and cancelled 6.39% of its flights against 2.05%.
Inside the window the days diverged sharply. Monday 10 November was one of the two worst days of the month, with roughly one scheduled flight in ten cancelled and fewer than two-thirds of the rest on time. By Wednesday the 12th, the day the shutdown ended, the flights that operated ran about nine in ten on time: the schedule had been thinned so far that the system had room to spare.
The pattern by carrier fits the account above. Across the three days the regional airlines cancelled the most: Republic, SkyWest and Envoy each lost more than a tenth of their schedule, far more than the mainline carriers they fly for. The cuts fell hardest at the airports already short on capacity: LaGuardia, O'Hare and Boston had the worst windows. The Veterans Day overview keeps every year side by side.
Airlines
US average 79.4%
65.0%85.0%
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
Delta Air Lines led at 82.4%, with Envoy at 82.2% and SkyWest at 82.0% close behind. The regional carriers' on-time figures are strong precisely because so many of their marginal flights were never flown: a cancelled flight is not scored as late. (Diverted flights drop out of the on-time rate the same way, and in the DOT file a flight that returns to its departure airport counts as a diversion.) I would not read Envoy's November figure as a better airline, only a thinner schedule. PSA Airlines finished last at 75.1%. Read the November airline table beside each carrier's cancellation rate, not instead of it; the cancellation rate guide explains why the two can move in opposite directions.
At O'Hare the carriers split. American at O'Hare ran November well above its annual level at the airport, while Delta's much smaller O'Hare operation ran below its own.
Thanksgiving
The busiest travel week of the year sits at the end of November, and it has its own guide. In 2025 the Thanksgiving week window ran 77.8% on time against 76.3% around it, 1.5 points better. The Thanksgiving guide takes it day by day, including the return weekend, which in 2025 was the hardest part of the week: the Saturday and Sunday after the holiday were the two worst days of the window.
How I would book November
Outside Thanksgiving, November is a strong month. Most airports ran November above their annual average, and in the Mountain West it was among the best months of the year. Denver in November is about as good as Denver gets.
Watch cancellations, not delays. The November risk in this data was a flight that did not go, not one that went late. Book the first departure of the day on routes into slot-limited or heavily cut airports, so that a cancellation still leaves later flights to move to.
Prefer mainline over regional on short hub routes. When airlines have to thin a schedule, the short regional legs go first. Over the 2025 Veterans Day window the three big regional carriers cancelled several times the share that Delta, United and American cancelled on their own mainline flights. A mainline flight on the same route is the one more likely to survive, and if the FAA ordered cuts again, it is the one I would book.
Build Thanksgiving around the weekend risk. Chicago and the upper Midwest can take their first real snow in late November, and the return weekend is when the system is most full. Fly home early in the day, and in 2025 the Friday after the holiday was a far better day to travel than the weekend that followed.
Check the November pages: Denver in November · O'Hare in November · LaGuardia in November · Veterans Day 2025 · Compare any US route