Symmetre

AC has been named "one of the worst" airlines in the world in yet another ranking of OTP.

"Almost a third of Air Canada’s flights reach their destination with a delay of at least 15 minutes, making the Canadian airline one of the worst performers in terms of punctuality." says a US website called Claims Compass, which gave the airline a cringe-inducing 2 out of 10 rating in its ranking of on-time performance. For what it's worth, AC rouge ranked even lower still, earning a stellar 1.6 out of 10 rating. Close to one-third of AC's flights were reported as delayed in 2018, with an average delay of 51 minutes. The average delay for rouge is a little higher, at 54 minutes.

By comparison, Westjet was rated 5.5 out of 10 with approx. 22 percent of its flights delayed, and an average delay of 46 minutes. Dead-last ranking went to Tunisair, with a 0.1 score.

Best performance rankings were awarded to overseas carriers including Ryanair, Qatar, KLM, ANA and Japan Airlines. Most of the US airlines seem to rank mid-pack.

WaytoomuchEurope

We should definitely spend a few thousand posts dissecting this totally fresh and unexplored topic.

AC's OTP is abysmal and it is unacceptable, regardless of whatever excuse gets thrown around. They won't change. People like me are the reason they don't need to. I know their OTP sucks and I plan around it and rarely complain about it. AC can keep charging $30-$40k a year to my card. I prefer them over the other options.

rankourabu

Take this in, in 2018 - May was the only month they managed to get above 80% last year.
Summer they run below 70%, winter below 60% in 2018

And we already know in first 2 months of 2019 - they didnt even manage 50% OTP.
https://www.claimcompass.eu/en/airli...gs/air-canada/

At least it seems like they pay out EU261 rather quickly according to this site.

HerpaYvr

I have done about 24 flights this month and I think two were on time!

I guess its a great time to collect those 15% & 20% discount codes

5mm

I generally get pi??ed off with flight delays But one thing I like about AC is they don't cancel their flights as easy as US airlines in bad weather. It kills there OTP, but generally you get a flight. US airlines start cancelling flights days before storms, just to protect their OTP. Great for them, but bad for everyone else. I spent extra nights in Chicago/NYC this winter because of this.

rankourabu

Yeah cool spin (and props for not simply stating old excuses), however, lets look at the actual numbers for Feb.2019 as provided by Flighstats.

AC cancelled 8.32% of their flights
AA 4.10%
UA 4.46%
DL 2.50%
WS 6.05%

Clipper801

Many delays are self-inflicted. On one of my recent flights, my AC flight, a 787, was held for 2.25 hours to wait for about a dozen connecting passengers. Stupid is the only word to describe it.

bawm

AC879 (ZRH-YYZ) was regularly delayed between early March and about a week ago, often 1-2 hours, waiting for customers connecting from LX147 (DEL-ZRH), which was re-routed every day due to the air space closures over Pakistan. I'm assuming it was more than a dozen each time, but still, completely self-inflicted. If you're going to operate late all the time, maybe the schedule needs adjusting!

Adam Smith

Is anyone surprised? OTP has been bad for a while and the MAX grounding can only have made it worse as there's now even less spare capacity in the system.

I think the reality is that AC under-blocks its flights, especially relative to the US competitors, which sets it up for failure. AC's planes don't fly faster and they don't get to cut to the head of the line on the taxiway or anything like that. Just take a look at routes where AC competes with the US carriers like YYZ-LGA, YVR-SEA, YYC-IAH, etc (or the inbounds) and you'll see that AC's block times are quite a bit lower than the US3's, and often a few minutes lower than WS if you make that comparison (whether on domestic or TB). If you block YYZ-LGA for 1:26 vs 1:30 for WS or 1:38-1:47 for AA, what do you expect is going to happen when measured against T+15? A flight that takes 1:44 to operate (not uncommon given possibility for delays on that route) will be "late" for AC "on time" for WS and "on time" or "early" for AA.

So if all three of those airlines were to complete their flights, on average, in 1:44, AC's OTP would look terrible, WS's would look fine, and AA would be the clear winner. But is any of them really better or worse, operationally? (Note that I haven't looked at stats on actual times, this is meant to be illustrative). What you would really have in this case is one airline that's just totally out to lunch when it comes to setting the schedule.

DL made a huge jump in OTP a number of years ago by simply acknowledging the reality that many fights took far longer than they had previously been estimated to and adjusting block times accordingly. I'm sure that if AC did the same, they could improve OTP pretty quickly.

^ In fact, I feel like I made a similar post to the above sometime in 2018. Not that the people who want to complain about OTP would pay any attention to that kind of thing.

Symmetre

It's not news to me either, Adam. But I keep being told how often the talking heads at AC read this forum. If that's true, you have to think that if you keep at it long enough, they will eventually get it through their thick heads that OTP is somehow important.

RangerNS

Consistently 30 minutes late is better than the alternative carriers who have half the frequency (at best) from home to wherever I'm heading.

That said, I don't know how AC can't game this number better.

bigev007

They do seem to be trying to game it hard. I've been on at least 10 flights this year that were 30+ mins late but the app and boards showed on time. Like even after I landed late, it said on time.

I wish if flights were gonna be late (and if the arriving flight is still on the ground at the other airport when boarding of mine is supposed to start...) that they'd be upfront about it so I could know I'll have time to eat or stay in lounge, or whatever .

RangerNS

They should go the other way. Increase all flight durations by 30 minutes, and then they would go to the best OTP in the business.

But yeah, lounge-chicken is a "fun" game.

Sopwith

rankourabu

Except this doesnt happen, we've been over this, and this takes about 10 seconds to google. I did the 3 routes you specified, we can keep going, but nowhere does AC significantly under block their flights - in fact they over block on some route (google YYZ-ATL, YVR-LAX) vs the competition to the point the 5 minute differences are a wash

AC is the same as Westjet on YYZ-LGA, and only 5 mins shorter than AA
YVR-SEA, again, the difference is only 5 minutes, and is same as Alaska
YYC-IAH - same as United, and only 5 minutes on Westjet.

I have no idea where there 15/20 minute differences you are coming up with come from.