Avoid These Airlines if You Want to Get Somewhere on Time
Joe Cortez August 26, 2015
Spirit, United and Frontier are the worst among U.S. carriers when it comes to avoiding delays.
Travelers booking flights aboard Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines or United Airlines may want to bring a book with them on their next trip, as statistics suggest their next flight will be delayed. In the latest Air Travel Consumer Report published by the U.S. Department of Transportation, these three airlines ranked as the worst for flight delays among reporting carriers in the U.S.
The latest edition of the monthly published report shows the three airlines experienced significant delays during June 2015. The DOT defines “on-time” as a flight that arrives within 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival time. According to data provided by each airline, less than half of Spirit flights arrived on time, while approximately one-third of Frontier and United flights experienced a delay.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines secured the top spots of the on-time table in June.
When compared to the 12-month rolling average ending June 2015, both Frontier and United performed worse than their averages of nearly one-in-four flights experiencing a delay. Spirit does not have 12-month performance data available, as they began reporting to the FAA at the beginning of 2015.
Hawaiian and Alaska took top honors in on-time performance for the 12-month period ending June 2015, reporting on-time averages of 89.6 percent and 85.6 percent respectively.
Among the reporting carriers, Frontier and Spirit had the most consumer complaints filed with the Department of Transportation from January through June 2015. Spirit received an average of 11.2 complaints per 100,000 flyers, while Frontier received 10.2 complaints per 100,000 flyers. Both figures are well above the industry average of 1.89 complaints per 100,000 flyers.
During the same period, Alaska and Southwest Airlines received the fewest number of complaints from passengers, reporting averages of only 0.57 and 0.52 complaints per 100,000 passengers respectively.
[Photos: iStock; DOT]
Why do people like to be negative when reporting? Is there another posting highlighting the top three instead of the bottom three? I am not surprised to see Delta near the top, I have been impressed with their punctuality since I started flying frequently with them.
It would be helpful if the headline mentioned US only airlines so those of us who travel anywhere but the US wouldn't bother opening the page.