A while back I asked if anyone would be interested in an analysis of US domestic flights. My team and I are still trying to bring the product out of beta testing, but it is sufficiently produced to provide some value.

We have created real time infographics that get updated every 2 months with the latest information calculated to provide an analysis of the YTD performance.

Again, this is only for US domestic airlines, airports, and all flights that originate and land in the US.

Individual Airline Infographics

AA | UA | DL | CO | US | WN | B6 | AS

All the calculations are made using data from the last 3 years. Right off the bat you get on time departure & arrival info YTD and a comparison to the last 2 years.

Next is cancellation rate, showing total number of flights taken, how many were cancelled, and the %. We provide 2 calendars that break down on time arrival & departure performance by month, showing you the best & worst of the last 2 years for comparison.

Regional airlines can be found by looking up the airline info page at http://www.qtripper.com/airlines/


Year End Report

Once a full year's info is added, we generate a year end report comparing on time arrival, on time departure, and cancellation rates to help visualize airline performance. The trophies are given based on the values on the column. Not to get too specific on how we calculate the worst airline, but we take deviations from the mean into consideration and properly give weight to certain values to generate the worst performing airline for that year.

In this example, Southwest was the worst performing airline for 2010, which really surprised me.

Airport Performance

You can look up any airport in the US at http://www.qtripper.com/airports/ using the search function and either entering the name or the 3-digit IATA code for any commercial US airport. Military and very small airports are not included.

Examples:
LAX | BOS | JFK

Again, this takes the last 3 years into consideration. Now you get the individual airport's ontime arrival/departure performance so you can compare let's say BUR to LAX or SFO to OAK to decide which airport would be best to fly into.

You get a breakdown of the reason for a delay and an average delay time caused by each reason for the current year.

The airport summary is, in our opinion, the most important part of this because we go in there and actually recommend things based on the metrics. For JFK, out of all the flights that have arrived at the airport, our calculations state that a Monday arrival has the least agony, especially if it is a Monday in December. The worst day to depart from JFK is on a Thursday, also in the month of December. That is followed with the worst performing connections from JFK.

You get the month play-by-play with direct comparison to the last 2 years, followed by a ranking of the top 5 causes of flight cancellations at that airport.

Individual Flights

When you go to http://www.qtripper.com/airlines/ on the right sidebar there is an area called "FLIGHT INFOGRAPHICS." Select an airline, then a flight number, and the origin-destination combination and go!

This area is still buggy as we try to filter our outlier flights. Southwest is playing hardball in our database, so those flights are currently unavailable. Some other flight numbers on other airlines fail to show up because of our filters, so if you don't find a specific flight, that is why.

There are no code share numbers for flights. If your flight is operated by a regional aircraft under a major aircrafts flag, you will not find the codeshare flight number listed under the major airline. It is too cumbersome to include all that information and we decided to give the regionals a little love and acknowledgment.

Example:
AS flight #14 from SEA to EWR

Here we give you last month's performance on all instances of this particular flight with delay times and a time average of delay causes.

Much like the airport infographics, we provide a summary based on all data points (not just last month's performance). We look at the day of the week of the flight and the month and recommend the best day of the week/month for an ontime arrival and the best day of the week/month for an ontime departure.

This is followed with a monthly comparison.

MR runners will be interested in average flight time, which includes taxi-in and taxi-out times to make those tight connections.

We added a "daily performance" for flights, where you can see the average delay the flights have on a specific day of the week. This flight, for example, has heavy delays on Tuesdays. They also seem to have stopped service on Wed in 2011.

Sources for the information and an embed code just in case anyone wants to embed the infographics to their blog are provided.

Have fun trying things out. The information up is real and based on actual data points and will be updated to include April 2011 and possibly May 2011 sometime in the next month.