On-time performance remained lousy through summer’s end

Airline on-time performance, which was bad for most of this year, didn’t get much better in August, according to the Transportation Department’s latest report. U.S. carriers’ flights arrived within 15 minutes of schedule just 71.7 percent of the time during August, compared with 75.8 percent in August 2006. Still, that was a slight improvement over July 2007, when the on-time rate was just 69.8 percent. The rate of cancelled flights in August 2007 was 1.9 percent, down from 2.1 percent in July, but worse than the 1.6 percent rate in August 2006. Airlines showed some improvement in lost bags, however – 7.55 per 1,000 passengers in August 2007, vs. 8.10 in August 2006 and 7.93 in July 2007. The number of complaints filed with DOT about air service jumped 89 percent from last year, to 1,634. The airlines with the best on-time arrival rates in August were Aloha (97 percent), Hawaiian (93.6 percent) and Southwest (77.7 percent). The worst on=tome arrival statistics came from Atlantic Southeast (55 percent), United (66.2 percent) and Alaska Airlines (67.1 percent). The highest flight cancellation rates were at Atlantic Southeast (4 percent), Mesa Airlines (3.9 percent) and Pinnacle Airlines (3.8 percent); the lowest cancellation rates were at Frontier (0.2 percent), Aloha (0.2 percent) and Southwest (0.5 percent).