If you’re looking for a rant about holiday travel chaos, this column will disappoint you.

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Airlines canceled 1,800 flights between Friday and Monday and delayed another 21,300 with an average delay time of 49 minutes, according to flight-tracking firm FlightAware. That compares with nearly 1,500 cancellations on the Friday before Father’s Day alone.

Credit the absence of widespread summer storms and, according to one expert, operational improvements airlines are making in the face of public pressure from the Transportation Department to reduce delays and cancellations.

“They did everything they could to protect flights over the 4th of July,” says William McGee, a veteran airline consumer advocate and senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit focused on competition. “The real test will be how we do the rest of July.”

Mr. McGee, who returned from a nine-day trip to Europe on Friday, says he was “floored” when I told him how smoothly things went as I traversed the country on packed planes.

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My holiday travel itinerary had many more legs and far less stress. Mr. McGee, the consumer advocate, suggested I place a bet in Las Vegas, my last stop.

“Boy are you lucky,” he says. “You were really pushing the envelope there.”