Airlines’ On-Time Performances Continue to Decline
Joe Cortez October 17, 2016
On-time performance of 77.6 percent across in August marks second-worst mark of summer.
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) revealed the decline in summer on-time performance continued in August, with airlines reporting their second-worst performance of the mid-year months. In October’s Air Travel Consumer Report, released Tuesday morning, airlines posted a 77.6 percent on-time arrival rate for the month of August – only slightly better than July’s on-time performance rate of 75.2 percent.
Among the domestic carriers, ultra-low cost carrier Frontier Airlines performed the worst, with only two out of every three aircraft arriving to their destination on time. Spirit Airlines joined Frontier at the bottom, arriving on-time nearly 72 percent of the time. American Airlines, JetBlue and regional carrier ExpressJet rounded out the worst-performing airlines.
Hawaiian Airlines performed the best among the domestic American carriers, with nearly 93 percent of departures arriving on schedule. Alaska Airlines came in second with an 87.8 percent on-time rate, followed by regional carrier SkyWest, Delta Air Lines and low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines.
With more flights being delayed, the DOT heard from more flyers about their poor experiences and travel delays. Over 900 complaints were filed in August 2016 about flight delays, cancellations, or misconnections, totaling 200 more complaints than in the same month last year.
However, on a global level, flyers were slightly happier with their flying experience this year than last. In total, flyers filed 1,282 complaints in August, or roughly 2.02 per 100,000 flyers. This number decreased from 2015, where flyers filed 2.29 complaints per 100,000 flyers. Flyers were happiest aboard Alaska and Southwest, which both received less than one complaint per 100,000 flyers in August.
[Photo: Matt Rourke/AP]
