RN29

I've done about 60 segments this year. About 65/35 Air Canada / United.

Taking the airport out of the equation, I find it's a bit a joke whenever Air Canada publishes a departure time. I have yet to ever leave on time or early. I can say that's happened with United (even the occasional AA or DL I jump on) every now and then. Now I recognize the airport, mechanical, staffing all play a part but I see a way more urgent push whenever I'm on United by all staff to get the plane out the door. I know they are benchmarked and compensated based on this. I suppose that's what a modicum of competition forces.

I'd like to start a thread and see what sorts of departure times everyone else is experiencing. Essentially your flight number, posted departure and when you actually pushed off from the gate. I'm curious if I'm just an incredibly unlucky flyer or others also experience this.

Currently on AC 701
Departure Time: 6:30
Actual Departure Time: 6:45

Jumper Jack

North American airlines ranked by average OTP for 2015

1. Hawaiian Airlines, 89.11%
2. Alaska Airlines, 86.38%
3. Westjet, 85.88%
4. Delta Air Lines, 84.46%
5. Southwest, 82.12%
6. Virgin America, 81.58%
7. American Airlines, 80.14%
8. Air Canada, 79.46%
9. United Airlines, 78.99%
10. JetBlue, 78.26%


For all four months of January, February,March, Apri in 2016 so far.
AC is behind AA,UA,DL for On Time Ranking for Main Line Flights , hovering around 74-75%
AC also has never managed to crack top half in rankings of global airlines for OTR this year.
Source: http://www.flightstats.com/company/m...orts/airlines/

smallmj

How do you personally define on time? The flightstats report noted above goes by gate arrival time, and gives 15 minutes of leeway.

YHZ_Flyer

Generally as you stated on time is + or - 15min of the scheduled gate departure, and gate arrival time. If you use flightaware or flightradar24 they often use the estimated takeoff time, which they usually have at 10 min after gate departure. It looks like the OP is defining ontime as pushing back from the gate at the scheduled gate departure time. He is not going by the 15 minute leeway.

I do agree with the OP though. I fly quite often out of YHZ on AC603, the 5:25am departure for YYZ. I've never seen it pushback at 5:25. It's usually closer to 5:35 or 5:40 before we are off the gate. However depending on taxi times, and the winds, these late pushback times often don't effect the arrival times too much.

RZR

I had 3 flights this week. All left on time or early.

ChrisA330

I see that AC701 actually pushed 1 minute late @ 6:31 and arrived at the gate 5 minutes early.

YOWkid

To be honest, not sure on time departure matters all that much. It's on time arrival that matters more.

All airlines pad their block times quite a bit (fair enough) to manage customers' expectations but more important to address airport and their own operational realities, and quite often, planes would rather sit at the gate instead of wasting gas to:
- Circle / stack if they know they will arrive ahead of schedule (for example, if there is a curfew at the arrival airport -- I once sat at SIN for 35 minutes because tailwinds were so good that we would have circled Switzerland 20 times before ZRH's night curfew would be over) or
- Taxi, waiting for a departure / arrival slot or gate.

YZF_Elite

For what it's worth, I have found AC's on time performance to have significantly improved since they implemented the 45 minute cut-off for check-in and have started boarding far earlier. I still get delays, but I no longer find them to be significantly different than WS, UA or other airlines I fly. At one time they were terrible at getting off the gate on time, but lately I've had a lot of early flights to go with my delayed ones. In the past 10 days I had two badly delayed YYZ-YVR / YVR-YYZ flights (second caused an overnight in YYZ missing a YOW cxn), but then I was 40 mins early on arrival to YOW from YYT on Tuesday.

Adam Smith

I think this is a bit harsh on AC. Looking at the ranking posted above, it's in a pack with a whole bunch of others within 2-3%.

As for my own experience, the vast majority of my flights on AC this year have been a few minutes early.

It's interesting to me that AC ranks ahead of UA in OTP though, because in my experience, UA's block times are hugely padded. Take a look at YYC-IAH, where UA's block times are about 20 minutes more than AC's. It's not that 737s/320s fly slower than CRAs, it's padding. YYC-ORD on UA has longer block times than YYC-YYZ on AC even though it's almost 20% shorter. If a UA flight leaves the gate on time or close to it, I therefore find we're usually quite early to destination. Yet AC still does (very slightly) better.

I fly DL a lot less, but my experience there has been quite good, very few delays, but again, block times that seem very significantly padded.

Dorian

Get out and fly more carriers...

KQ is often hours late...

LH591 was 24 hours later this week for me.

Currently on LH492 which was maybe 30 min late.

PB53x11

I would say most of my flights have been (more or less) on time - but most of my flights are domestic. By "more or less" I'm thinking within 10-15 minutes of scheduled.

My YYZ to the US flights on the other hand have had delays because of pax getting thru security and US customs - not that I fly a lot to the US, but YYZ-MCO last week was perhaps 40 minutes delayed because 60 pax were stuck in the abysmal line-ups. Ugh. Return flight was on time, though.

Plumber

Most of my flights are generally on time. I actually don't care if I leave the gate on time, as long as I arrive on time (as others have mentioned, with 15 minute leeway).

My two flights yesterday
YOW-YYZ left the gate 9 minutes early
YYZ-LHR left the gate 1 minute early.

flyquiet

I don't think there is much benefit to crowdsourcing on-time departure information from the minuscule fraction of all AC flights experienced by FT posters. As noted above, flightstats.com keeps records.

To moderate my own expectations, I check it before my flight and find their prediction of when I will leave will usually be accurate, even while AC does not revise its prediction, or even change the display board at the gate. (Ex-MCO, you'll often see it flashing the final boarding call before the incoming aircraft is on the ground.) Tracking the incoming aircraft gives me something to distract from my impatience.

It's easy to remember all those times we were delivered "late" (and boy, would you be pissed if the flight left early and you were on time!) but how memorable is an early arrival? I was half an hour early in from FCO this week for example. (The only reason I even noticed was that I arranged a pickup for 8:45 pm because my calendar told me it arrived at 8:45 pm. However the calendar was in Euro time. I actually arrived at 2:15 - not 2:45 - Eastern. Oops.)

YZF_Elite

I do some of the same.

I also have some personal 'rules'. I try my best to avoid YYC in Winter and YYZ anytime when flying domestic, especially during thunderstorm season. YYZ is hard to avoid when flying intl/transborder and US cxns are usually from equally problematic UA hubs.

I fly YOW-YVR/YEG/YYC-onwards a lot and am seldom delayed, but whenever I mix in YYZ especially for widebody cxns to YVR, I end up in trouble.

superangrypenguin

The thread title is simply a statement that is not true. Air Canada is never not punctual.

A flight that is classified as on time with respect to departure time is one that has pushed back within 15 minutes of the posted departure time. So the OPs flight is classified as on time. (pushing back at 645am with a posted time of 630am), so as to what the issue is.

Anyways, in my travels, AC is on time far more often than not, but it is an airline that is incentivized to be on time. (for its own good). So meh, I take it with a grain of salt.