demkr

https://www.bizjournals.com/chicago/...rformance.html

United Airlines very badly lagged its three largest competitors in on-time arrival performance in January.

Airline data behemoth OAG on Thursday released the on-time results for January, showing United a very distant fourth in the on-time arrivals derby that also includes the nation’s three other largest carriers — Delta Air Lines, Southwest Airlines and American Airlines.

cesco.g

Besides weather, cramming even more flights into congested SFO & EWR airports is mentioned in the article as well.

MBS MillionMiler

I wish I had a 73.6% on-time percentage in January!


In January alone, I spent 4 nights on UA's dime in hotels in various cities, one was a Transpac mechanical cancellation, one a domestic. 2 were weather related. To further the problem, on the 'big cancellation' Saturday a few weeks ago, I was on 7 different UAX flights that canceled throughout the day. Some mainline, most Skywest. ...And I know that the Express carriers don't even count in the abysmal numbers. I'm sure the full report has Skywest and Air Wisconsin's numbers as well, and I'd bet they're much worse than UA's!



February isn't much better. 4 flights this week, ONE was on time. One 20 minute delay, one 45 minute delay and the worst was last night, a 3 hour delay. 2/3 weather. One because of 'operations' which forced our inbound crew to be late.



Indeed they talk about EWR and SFO, but Chicago has just been absolutely horrible this winter. I know it's one excuse after another, but the first snowflake falls and they're cancelling and delaying things just. like. that. I know it's smaller, but DTW gets very similar weather to ORD, and it's not nearly as bad.


My big question, why doesn't ORD have de-icing pads like every other bad weather airport on the planet?*


(*I know the 'every other...planet' isn't true, but most of you will understand my tongue-in-cheek comment).

demkr

Every winter weather prone airport should be like MSP. Fastest deicing perhaps in the world.

HNLbasedFlyer

I had 12 flights in January - all on time.

EWR764

Last I heard, that was in the works (as in scheduled for construction) on the west side of the field, but who knows where that stands. It's really an inefficient system currently.

Darlox

The ops problems this winter have been a comedy of errors, and not just due to weather... Had a fun one a couple weeks ago where the prior night's inbound was 3-hours late due to MX, so the gap between arrival and FAA-mandated rest requirements couldn't be met. So the first flight of the day was 3-hours delayed. Finally board, and, whoops... they hadn't bothered to fuel the plane. By the time they got the plane fueled, a bunch of people onboard were now going to misconnect AGAIN, and wanted to get off. Until they offloaded those pax, we got in ~5 hours late.

About two weeks prior to that, had a crew time-out on the ground, due to an FAA traffic control program into BOS, that resulted in the flight being cancelled.

Weather was bad, but UA ops last month were horrible.

cfischer

Unfortunately nothing new here. UA almost always lags the competition on on-time performance during difficult (winter weather, T-storms etc.) weather periods. Somehow other airlines are MUCH better dealing with the elements compared to UA.
I can attest to this myself this month where it took an enormous amount of time to get the plane off the gate and then de-ice ... like an hour and a half ... in Boston (!) where they should really be equipped to deal with winter weather.

Bonehead

I would like to see these statistics broken down a bit...for example, what effect do the many NYC ATC restrictions caused by wind etc. have on UA versus the other airlines? ORD issues? SFO issues?

I suspect that any airline that had a gigantic hub at ATL would have a built-in advantage, but I'm just speculating.

UA issue or BOS issue?

PsiFighter37

mahasamatman

The government shutdown also had a disproportionate effect on EWR.

goodeats21

Why is that? Didn't it impact all NYC airports about the same?

mahasamatman

The percentage of United flights through EWR is significantly higher than the percentage of any other airline's NYC flights.

cfischer

UA issue

huh, how is that relevant? UA is not the largest carrier in NYC anymore. Not sure how the presence at EWR has anything to do with this.

EWR764