Air Canada ranks dead last among large NA carriers for On-Time Performance, Again
 

For the month of January of 2018, only 52.1% of flights by AC actually arrived on time.
On the plus side, AC actually beat Sunwing and Air Inuit, so its not a complete poop show... yet?
In fact, no other major carriers even come to close to the absolute awful record AC has manages to top.
I don't even want to post UA/DL/AA figures because it would look made AC look comically worse than it already manage to poop the bed.

Comparison to West Jet : 63.1%
Comparison to Jet Blue: ~66%
Even Porter managed to reach 55%
All three airlines above essentially hubs in cold areas similar to AC.
DL: 80.4%
UA: 78.7%
AA: 78.1%


For the month of December 2017, only 51.9% of flights by AC actually arrived on time.
Comparison to West Jet : 58.8%
Comparison to Jet Blue: ~73.5%
DL: 80.2%
UA: 80%
AA: 78.7%


For detail info
Jan Report: https://www.oag.com/hubfs/Monthly_OT...f-4c7fb7c05ca2
Dec Report: https://www.oag.com/hubfs/Monthly_OT...6-d74285bc8b5c

Yo AC execs, I know some of you guys read this, so maybe get your act together because that four star logo is almost a satire at this point?

On the other hand I am thrilled to find out if AC manage to take the crown next month.

I have no idea why you are comparing an international airline to Jetblue and Westjet. You mentioned said "four star logo", then you might as well compare them to, you know, international N. American Airlines, otherwise you might as well compare AC to Via Rail or Greyhound.

For Dec*:
DL: 80.2%
UA: 80%
AA: 78.7%

The argument was often that only AC flies from mostly winter hubs(?), well neither of which really hold up anyways but here you go.

That's depressing.

https://i.imgur.com/lVt5LN2.png
https://i.imgur.com/KhBDBW7.png
https://i.imgur.com/8a7oY7W.png

Three billboards outside of Dorval, Qc.

Look at the bright side... they improved from December to January.

And the odds of you arriving on time are better than the odds of arriving late!
























Slightly.

Jet Blue and West Jet are international airlines. In case you missed it, Both have a hefty footprint in the Caribbean including Central America and the northern part of South America. West Jet is more pronounced in Mexico. Were you aware that west jet flies to the UK and will soon start service to France? JetBlue flies in regions far more susceptible to weather delays than Air Canada. Did you know that West jet has much of its domestic schedule in the domestic snow belt? And yet it still manages to beat AC.

Had the steady and brilliant young lad in the jumper compared AC to Greyhound or Via, I expect that the disparity in performance would be even more evident. He strikes me as kind and thoughtful, so he most likely do not wish to rub salt into an open festering wound.

Air Canada's OTP has been dismal and downright abusive. The reason for that is that there is NO incentive for the airline to do better. There are no regulatory costs to deal with and little if any requirement to take care of Canadian domestic pax. When needed, AC always blames the weather. How about the AC compensation committee start deducting bonuses and stock options from the senior executives..

Just pad the damn schedules!

OTP reports like this are pretty useless because the airlines themselves determine their schedules which are used for OTP calculations. No two carriers have the same scheduling methodology. US carriers are known to pad their schedules, often aggressively, on many routes.

I fly UA a lot within the US and it's extremely common on many routes when leaving the gate on time to always arrive 10-20 minutes early. Consistently. So when something does go wrong and you arrive 10 mins later then scheduled, in reality you arrived 20-30 minutes later than normal, but it is still considered 'on time' by those statistics. AC, in my experience has a much more 'honest' schedule based on ideal flying conditions.

Not saying that AC is doing 'well' in this metric, but it's not as simple as saying other carriers are doing that much better. And the routes of flights flown, including weather/climate is also a relevant consideration. Yes, the major US carriers have hubs in winter regions. But then they also have hubs that are not, and these flights help to improve their statistics at this time of year.

Air Canada is already padding the times. Let's grab a random flight

AC 119 YYZ- YVR Sched. Depart 4:10 Est Sched. Arrive 6:00 PM PST Flight time 4 hours 50 minutes Average Delay 20-40 minutes

WS 717 YYZ-YVR Sched. Depart 3:59PM Est Sched. Arrive 5.22 PM PST Flight Time 4 hour 23 minutes Average Delay 10-20 minutes

Air Canada gives itself a cushion of 27 minutes, almost half an hour, and yet it still manages to arrive 20-40 minutes late.
Both West Jet and Air Canada are leaving at almost the same time, and have the same weather conditions and yet West Jet out performs Air Canada by 27 minutes PLUS an additional 10-20 minutes. If Air Canada and West Jet adjusted their flights to reflect OTP, then their respective flight times should show a minimum 5 hours and 30 minutes for AC and 4 hours and 43 minutes for West Jet.
Do you think that would work well for the brand image? :)

Not sure where you are getting those schedules from, but WS717 is definitely scheduled closer to 5+ hours. Here are a selection of upcoming dates. ACs and WSs schedules are the same (barring minor differences due to equipment used). AC may be failing for other reasons, but they are not padding relative to WS.

Please don't.

Padding the scheduled means fewer legal connections that frankly are reasonable connections.

I remember when I was a high school students in BC. Standardized testing was well established and progressively the test score were getting better year over year. Not because the students were smarter or the teachers were doing a better job. It was because they were teaching to optimse the test outcome. They hand out older versions, and teach the test. The tests were crap nonsense designed to be marked by a machine.

This is the same thing. If you push to hard on this score and AC starts to manage the network to get the correct score. They will start padding the time. For flights from hubs to remote communities in Canada they sometimes delay the flight a few minutes to get connecting passengers on board. That will go away.

On time performance is important. Scoring better than United is not.

Please excuse my naïveness in case I'm missing something obvious, but this being Air Canada, unlike DL, AA, or UA with huge hubs down in the South with no snow, AC has to deice each and every single flight in the winter season, and a waaaay larger proportion of their fleet/flights on a daily basis than the US3 do. Do these on-time stats factor de-icing times? It would be a massive red flag for the reliability of these stats if they did not equally factor this in across the board. Isn't it obvious that having to deice is going to take longer than not having to?

I fail to see why a bit of padding is a bad thing. It is an acknowledgement that 'stuff' happens. Apparently it happens a lot to AC, especially in the winter. OTP isn't just about bragging rights, it is about minimizing missed connections.