scruffair

Since there are several threads with arguments about UA cxl and delays compared to other airlines, especially AA and DL, here is a thread for discussion based on actual data.

I check pretty much every day and UA, whether it's monthly, weekly or daily, consistently blows AA and DL away on cancellations.

Here are mainline cancellations from Flight Aware from Aug 14th:
UA: 12
AA: 4
DL: 1

Aug 13th:
UA: 12
AA: 7
DL: 7

Here's delay and cancellation data over last 30 days from Flight Stats for domestic:
CANCELLATIONS
UA: 556
AA: 449
DL: 139

DELAYS
UA: 15,479
AA: 11.800
DL: 13,914 (Keep in mind DL flies 56% more flights than UA so the delay percentage differential is truly striking)

Here's delay and cancellation data over last 30 days from Flight Stats for Europe & Asia/Pac:
CANCELLATIONS
UA: 143
AA: Lower than 38 (Too low to show on Flight Stats)
DL: 70

DELAYS
UA: 1273
AA: N/A
DL: 834

And I believe UA has improved some recently from June so June's numbers are likely much worse than this.

Sydneyair

Using past 30 days from flightstats.com (to smooth out any day-to-day fluctuation) :

CXN Delays Carrier (mainline only)
889 28,759 (WN) Southwest Airlines
726 18,679 (AA+US) American Airlines + US Airways *
556 15,495 (UA) United Airlines
139 13,937 (DL) Delta Air Lines

*
450 11,814 (AA) American Airlines
276 6,865 (US) US Airways

I see UA roughly in line with AA+US once you normalize against # of flights. It paints a biased picture when only counting L-AA and ignoring L-US.

Imstevek

that's great data! The scale of the UA problems is unbelieveable. Also the ratio of DL cxl, domestic to INTL is almost as shocking. Thank you! Is there a way to keep this updated week-over-week?

cesco.g

Interesting stats and putting them into relation to % of all flights makes it even better.
Also, the break-out of international flights is very valuable, due to the disruption factor being more important / limited alternate flight options vs. domestic.

scruffair

Good point.

However, the monthly breakouts on Flight Stats still seem to show that UA is noticeably worse than even AA...

Here's July:

Delayed
AA: 20.42%
DL: 15.65%
US: 19.28%
UA: 25.02%

Cxl
AA: 0.61%
DL: 0.43%
US: 0.73%
UA: 1.07%

And UA even wins (loses) for AVERAGE DELAY which better explains the difference in customer experience between airlines:
AA: 65.37
DL: 58.23
US: 53.23
UA: 66.78

Again, this is with UA's IMPROVEMENT in July. June was much worse.

SkiCO

Finally a worthy United thread that is interesting with some data as a basis. Good to keep watching.

This poor performance has to stem from lack of integration of labor force and hostile relations between Mgt team and all.

sbm12

For the past 2 months, including regionals (no reason to exclude them):

It is also interesting to look at the % of flights delayed 45 minutes or more:
I don't think there is anyone claiming that the UA performance stats beat other carriers. The data has been clear for a while now.

Kacee

Actually there was an assertion in the other thread (which kind of instigated this discussion) that UA has "hundreds of international flights per day" and that when you take into account "the law of averages" the UA figures are "what one would expect"

Thanks for the compilation.

sbm12

Here are the same numbers for only international flights. This includes regional and long-haul. Basically anything where from and to are not both in US.


45 minute+ delays %
Looking at UA int'l flights only in the flight number ranges 1-199 or 800-999 (theoretically only longhaul) UA gets:
I don't have an easy way to evaluate the same data for the other carriers. Willing to try if someone has an idea.

LarkSFO

I follow 'the other threads' closely, as it appears you attempt to.

However, I have seen nobody post the assertion you make above.

Can you please share the thread and post number where you saw this?

Thanks,

shttrdrvr

Consolidated "Delayed/Cancelled" International Flights (2015)

WineCountryUA #2111. Made a topic check. Lots of discussions between that one and goalie's reminder as well.

Kacee

Not sure how you missed them. They caused the back-and-forth that sparked this thread.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25286001-post2080.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/25286159-post2086.html

LarkSFO

Thank you for the legwork, I appreciate it.

I did unsubscribe from that useless thread (where you found those useless posts) a while ago and have not gone back...

I thought you were referring to one of these threads: SFH: yes or no? Or the 2 operational performance ones.

escapefromphl

Anyway to normalize out the effects of EWR and SFO, two of the most delay prone airports?

greg99

Why would you normalize out the effects of two of UA's busiest international hubs?

In particular, why would you do so when you're comparing operations at the same hubs over time?

That's like going to a job interview and explaining away a couple of semesters of bad grades by saying you didn't work very hard in school that year...

Greg