JerryFF

The policy of WN not to build ANY padding into their schedule or provide substitute aircraft when an incoming flight is very late inevitably results in flights late in the day being late. At least it seems to work out that way for me. As long as I am not making a connection, I guess it's no big deal. But I wonder if there are any simple summary charts that show on-time arrivals vs time of day.

djp98374

If you are trying to compare airlines it's apples and oranges. Southwest does alot of continuing service flights, the other airline rarely does.

Southwest doesn't have the same airport spoke roting system other airlines do so they don't have spare planes sitting around.

When southwest wants to catch up a route if they are at one of their busier airports like BWI or MDW they will have the continuing pax switch planes and gates.

nsx

Since Southwest does not fly overnight, its early AM departures are rarely delayed. That alone skews the results in favor of flights early in the day.

My intra-California experience is 99.5% on time for first flight of the day, about 75% on time late in the afternoon. In the department of worthless statistical inferences, that makes a 50 times higher probability of delay late in the day! YMMV.

rsteinmetz70112

With Southwest's point to point system and minimal turn arounds delays are likely to propagate throughout the network. The point to point system is better suited to airports which have relatively low volume allowing quick access to runways.

Southwest's current poor on time performance indicates poor network planning and over optimistic scheduling. Performance is unlikely to improve as Southwest tries to impose it's point to point system on busier airports unless something else gives.

With a hub and spoke system the layovers at hubs somewhat insulate delays.

Weather often increases landing intervals at busy airports like ATL also propagating delays.

The decreased frequency of flights late at night allows airlines to catch up and start the process over again.

JerryFF

Perhaps they could isolate certain aircraft using airports with a higher than average delay factor. It seems silly that a flight from, say STL to OKC, would be 2 hours late because the aircraft had to come out of LGA earlier in the day.

HPN-HRL

IIRC, WN did exactly that when they first received slots into LGA. I don't know when they stopped this practice.

travelingsuit

My coworkers all tell me about how SW is always on time for them..

In my experience, my 6-10am flights are perfect.

But my 4pm-8pm flights are usually half an hour late. But I don't use this as an excuse to show up at the airport late. Tonight my flight was scheduled for 7:40pm, and at 7:40 we were on the runway taking off. First time I've had this route be on time, after flying it 8 times in the last few months.

I've heard a lot of FA's tell people to hurry up and sit down so they can get moving and catch up time. At Christmas the gate attendants for a Denver destination flight asked the PAX if they could skip cleaning the plane to turn the plane around faster and help people not miss their connections in Denver.

expert7700

Hey, you can always book the afternoon BUF-MDW-LAS flight I was just looking at



Look on the bright side, 107.5 minutes is the average delay. Some days might be much longer.