From 4th to 8th in 2 short years - WSJ Airline Rankings
 

Seems that the statistics bear out my experience. United is just getting worse: https://graphics.wsj.com/dynamic-ins...bd82ecc1e.json

Not quite sure how you can mess up so badly that you drop below Spirit, Allegiant and Frontier. Really takes some doing.

But hey, at least Oscar gets to watch "Rise of Skywalker"!

It helps to use statistics that appear to be mostly based around what cities you have as hubs.

While some of these delays and cancellations are certainly UA's fault, a lot of them are the result of having hubs in ORD, IAH, SFO, and EWR.

Yawn. It is what it is when you are held captive by weather.

Hey, at least you won't get IDBd!!! :)

year round ?

True, although -according to this list- Delta has them beat even in that category!
:rolleyes:

With Kirby moving to the helm its going to be 9 out of 9.

Only if that saves a dollar.

All the major UA hubs are susceptible to weather events all year round - a little less so with perhaps DEN even then, a major snow/lightening event can cause problems.

When the weather is good - the rankings rise. When the weather is bad, they fall. When there is no airport construction - they rise. Airport construction - they fall.

You can't fight air traffic control. In me experience, UA pushes hard to get flights out on time - there are multiple posts of people mad when planes not held for them on the push for on-time departures.

Yes?

I mean, even if it were only part of the year -- and it's not -- those statistics still count. Airlines that have hubs in cities with better weather are going to have better on-time statistics. And on-time statistics appear to count for about half of the categories in this list.

Furthermore, ordinal rankings are nearly useless. For all we know, #1 - #8 are a virtual tie, with #9 being 500 points back. Or, #1 is way ahead, and #2-#9 are a virtual tie. There's no way to tell.

Yes, SFO is foggy year round :D

...and precipitation at EWR year round.

I respectfully disagree. jsloan's point in post #10 withstanding (;)), I would argue that United wins hands down even over Delta when you look at it from an opportunity-adjusted standpoint! :D

Yep, there was some similar posts a few months back and if you go look at the statistics from the government a lot of this has to do with the airports used as hubs.

I might weight 2 hour tarmac delays and mishandled baggage more heavily than WSJ appears to. Cancelling my flight sounds better than sitting in the plane on the tarmac for two hours while the flight attendants refuse to serve anything because we could take off at any time.

Kirby shifted from an A:15 or A:0 goal to a D:0 goal which is probably easier to control since D:0 means the door on the plane is closed by departure time. All of the metrics in the link point to a disregard for arrival times which is what most people care about.

EWR is EWR year-round.

A:15 is also the metric over which the airline has the least control. The logic of D:0 is that it is almost entirely airline-controllable, therefore a more reliable indicator of how the airline is performing independent of weather and ATC issues. Still, with "dynamic D:0" and the ConnnectionSaver software, United isn't nearly as dogmatic about D:0 as AA.

United did choose where to put its hubs also when comparing it to Delta's hubs, I don't think united can claim that hub location is that impactful in this score. With Delta having hubs in Boston, Detroit, MSP, New York, and Seattle, all cities which have cold weather issues, rain, snow, fog, etc. Regardless, it is something to think about if you are booking a flight on united is that your are more likely to face significant delay because of where they are forcing you to layover.

I question the metrics used by the WSJ. Why are there no allowances for stage length? ;)

They should have put Air Canada into the rankings, with a ~55% on time performance, they would have smashed all the US airlines for last place :D

Some airports handle weather better than others -

64% of flights leave Newark on time
65% for ORD
66% for DEN
As opposed to ATL which is 77%

Seattle, Atlanta, Salt Lake City, Detroit, Minneapolis all are designed well for weather and handle it well.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/th...hts-2019-09-05

So I am too lazy to research this, but since you are saying that United is getting worse, you may have done that already:

Is United getting worse in absolute numbers, or just relative to others?

I don't disagree about the ATC comment, I do think though that UA bears some culpability in the way that it over burdens some of its hubs eg EWR where, based on my experience a cloud constitutes a weather event.

On the flip side, there would be outrage on FT if UA announced a bunch flight cuts at EWR or SFO

That data is for only a 2-month period.

Using this site:

https://www.transtats.bts.gov/ONTIME/OriginAirport.aspx

For all of 2019 the departure delay % for DL at ATL and UA at DEN are:

DL: 16%
UA: 21%

Not such a big difference.

Huh?

The argument isn't that UA is better or worse than DL at any given airport; it's that UA has a lot more flights out of places with a delay. Comparing UA vs DL at DEN isn't the point; the weather at DEN would disproportionately affect UA because they have so many more DEN flights. (And DEN is one of their better hubs).

(Reading comprehension)

Reread my post. UA at DEN and DL at ATL.

I'd also like to know what % of each airline's flights out of each hub is mainline vs regional. I know that at EWR the regionals get killed in terms of cancellations/delays when there's weather.

So many variables.

I've longed blamed this phenomenon at SFO for United's killing the SFO-CIC service, as well as service on a lot of other intra-California routes.

Interesting that they are starting some new service in CA (adding SMX). Would really like if they brought back IYK, but think that ship has sailed...

And I think (but I haven't really looked) that a lot of that service is out of LAX, which is how it should be, despite the fact that SFO is more centrally located within California. I just don't know that they have much in the way of gates at LAX to support more regional service.

Sorry, I mis-read.

Yes, but not due to anything inherent about those planes; just because that affects the fewest passengers. If they up-gauged everything at a given hub to mainline, it wouldn’t change the delay statistics any unless they reduced frequency as well.

Interestingly enough all of the cities listed there are Delta hubs. Why is Chicago so much worse than MSP or DTW as the weather is similar? Maybe it is not so much the airport, but instead, the predominant airlines that operate at these airports driving the statistics. If anything, I think this shows DL's operation is even more stellar than these stats suggest. MSP and DTW have awesome cold weather operations, what's wrong with ORD? United and American are what's wrong.

Or, maybe because MSP and DTW handle less than half the flights as ORD.

United doesn't run the airport - make ATC decisions - operate the snow removal equipment, etc.

Assuming the criteria has remained constant, UA moving from 4th to 8th is the more important point. These airlines haven't changed the location of their hubs in the last 2 years.

I'm not sure I'd call summer thunderstorm season at ATL handled well; I'd say handled more pragmatically in part because Delta has a pretty serious time buffer built in for both weather and ATC issues at Atlanta in particular. And I'm actually okay with that because it makes the system more predictable in terms of whether you're likely to make a connecting flight, even if I get a little eye rolly at times about how a regular 20 minute hold at origin at VPS or PNS for ATC reasons still leads to a regular on-time arrival at ATL.

Airlines can't control the weather, but they can control building slack in to a system that's exposed to weather.
It's like planning a bank of flights in Florida summer around 3p. The airlines will blame the weather, but we all know a thunderstorm will roll through every day.

In any case, I was surprised with the rankings. United's image has certainly improved, but now I think that's just marketing. I didn't expect their lack of bad press to be solely because AA is an even easier punching bag.

I guess it depends on the person. I'm no hotshot, fly about 75-85k miles a year domestically and a few trips internationally, and have been happy with UA pretty much since Munoz took over. I can count on one hand the number of times UA has made me angry the past five years or so. In fact, I think I'm happier now than I've been in a long time with UA and the *A.

For my needs, UA and *A do very well for me.

I fly AS, DL, UA (and their partners) quite a bit, and I will just say this: DL, in particular, is not as good as people perceives them to be; UA, on the other hand, is better than what people would like to give credit for, especially on FT.

So many last place finishes for AA. Ouch!

At least you are ahead of American!

And twice as many runways. The operating airlines have plenty of influence on the airport operations even in the cases where they are not directly operating.

United is an operational disaster, especially in irrop situations. I could go on and on with stories just in the past year. All you need to do to see what I am talking about is press the little "track inbound aircraft" button in the app on a delayed flight, and compare the arrival time to the updated departure time they post and ponder if that could be possible. That kind of bad information spirals into crew scheduling and gate assignment issues.

What the survey doesn't pick up on is the quality of the interiors, in flight entertainment, clubs, airport facilities, etc all of which Delta wins on hands down, as well. United hubs at America's dumpiest airports and many planes in dire need of refurbishment. Don't get me started on IAD - horrible.

I fly United a ton, I want them to be better, I root for them but am constantly disappointed.

Here's what United has better than Delta: Int'l business class mileage redemptions and the website.