Jan-Oct 2009 airline report card from WSJ

[chipmaster]

Ontime arrival: defined as < 15'

1) SW at 82.5

bringing up the rear JetBlue, AirTran and American at 77, 76 and 75.7%

 

Canceled flights:

1) Continetal at 0.47%

bringing up the rear: JetBlue, American, United, 1.15, 1.53 and 1.58%

 

Miss Handled Baggage: reports/1000 passengers

1) Air Tran 1.65

bringing up the rear: Alaska, Delta and American all > 4

 

Consumer complaints: per million

1) SW 2.1

Bringing up the rear: Continental, American, US Airways, United and Delta at > 10

 

Bumped Passengers: per 10,000

1) JetBlue 0.00 :eek: ( really was 7 passengers out of 17 million )

Bringing up the rear: Continental, US Airways, Alasak at 1.39, 1.49 and 2.1. Southwest was right there with 1.29.

 

Ontime Airports < 15'

Phoenix 84%, Seattle 82%, Houston 82%, Detroit 82%, LAX 80.7%, Washngton 80%, Charlotte 80%, minneapolis 80%, and Las Vegas 79.6%

 

An interesting sidebar: If you want to try to get bumped United and US Air had the highest rate of passengers giving up seats.

[paul929207]

Thanks for reminding me how horrible air travel is.

[kenish]

...and airlines game the system. The 15-minute definition is push-back from the gate. Flights are sometimes pushed back 10 feet from the gate and sit for an hour....they departed "on time" in the statistics. I'm glad WSJ used OT arrival rate.

[hdawson]

Good information, however the best is the Annual Airline Service Quality Ratings that comes out in April for the preceeding year. This research is done by the University of Nebraska and I think under a DOT contract. Not sure. The low cost carriers always dominate the top three or four rankings. The last rankings placed AirTran as #1 of the domestic lines. Delta seems entrenched in the #12 spot.

[scottbee]

...and airlines game the system. The 15-minute definition is push-back from the gate. Flights are sometimes pushed back 10 feet from the gate and sit for an hour....they departed "on time" in the statistics. I'm glad WSJ used OT arrival rate.

 

Let's not also forget that pretty much every airline has padded the flight times for your flights too. Check scheduled flight times between two major cities now, and 30 years ago. Surprise it's 'scheduled' longer now, which of course results in fewer 'late' arrivals. If you arrive 20 minutes early, that's not important...

[hubofhockey]

AirTran probably has the least lost luggage because people carry their luggage on. They charge for bags and run short flights which combine to lead to less bags checked per those 1,000 passengers.

 

Ontime arrival. Well, Southwest often flies into secondary less busy airports and that has to help with getting their flights in on time. It probably also leads to less complaints. People also can't complain about broken televisions and wifi not working on SW because they don't have either.

 

Some stats are pretty interesting. I'm impressed with Continental not missing flights and JetBlue not bumping people.

[parody]

Some stats are pretty interesting. I'm impressed with ... JetBlue not bumping people.

 

It is jetBlue's corporate policy not to overbook flights that may lead to bumping people involuntarily. In fact, for the whole year of 2005, they had no involuntary bumps. Quite remarkable. If this is an important consideration, a person can figure that their odds of getting bumped on jetBlue are on the order of 1 in a million (or better).

[Globaliser]

Surprise it's 'scheduled' longer now, which of course results in fewer 'late' arrivals.

Why should that be a surprise? With increasing congestion on the ground and in the air, you would expect many flights to take longer gate-to-gate. After all, aircraft are flying no faster than they flew 30 years ago, but many things often now combine to make both ground times and flying times longer than they used to be.

 

Airlines can't "pad" at will, anyway. They have a strong commercial incentive to keep scheduled times as short as reasonably possible. And lots of very early landings do not always make for very early arrivals, as the flight that lands 20 minutes early may find that its gate is still occupied by the previous aircraft that has not yet departed.

[parody]

Ontime arrival: defined as < 15'

1) SW at 82.5

 

Of course, the answer depends on the population one is drawing from. The WSJ article used "major airlines"--and, presumably US based. If one used BTS's data on the top 19 US carriers flying nonstop flights, the number 1 airline is Hawaiian with an on-time record for the first 11 months of 2009 at 91.4%.

[hdawson]

As usual, Globaliser's wisdom trumps. Common sense as opposed to trying the blame game.