Originally Posted by
Cledaybuck
Don't forget that a plane that is up to 14 minutes late is still considered on time for the DOT statistics, so even a good on time rate may not be as good as it looks in this situation.
This is true, but I am talking about a true on-time arrival.
Delta seems to target an average delay of about 0 minutes if you look at their on-time stats (some months they are on average 1 minute early, some they are on average 1 minute late, but it's roughly 0 minutes).
Since delays have a long tail (i.e., many planes are delayed by many hours) whereas arrivals have a firm lower bound (obviously no flight can be less than 0 minutes, but even beyond that, a plane still has to fly from point A to point B with some variation due to winds). This means that, statistically, the median Delta flight arrives early - and probably something like 60-75% of them do if I had to guess. Then there are 10% that arrive "on time" per the DoT (0-14 min delay) but are delayed, and then the remaining 10-15% that are actually delayed per DoT stats.