And passenger numbers keep dropping

One benefit from the airline industry’s ongoing domestic schedule reductions showed up in government statistics for August: More flights are arriving on time. The Transportation Department’s operational statistics for August showed that 78.3 percent of U.S. carriers’ flights arrived within 15 minutes of their scheduled times during the month, a significant improvement from the 71.7 percent for the same month in 2007. In fact, it was the best performance for August arrivals in five years. The number of cancellations was also down for the month. The number of August flight operations declined by 6 percent year over year, the government said. Through the first eight months of the year, on-time arrivals stood at 74.3 percent, vs. 72.1 percent for the same period in 2007.

And the cutbacks in domestic flight schedules are increasing this fall. A study by J.P. Morgan found that industry-wide capacity cutbacks by the end of the year will mean about 10 to 12 percent fewer seats will be available than at the end of 2007. U.S. airlines are grounding a combined total of 512 planes – about the size of Northwest Airlines’ entire fleet. That includes both mainline jets and regional jets, plus a small number of turboprops. Some routes are being dropped, but the vast majority of the cutbacks are coming in the form of fewer flights per day on busy routes, giving business travelers fewer options. Meanwhile, the latest monthly traffic statistics show that airlines are justified in reducing capacity, because passenger traffic is continuing to drop at a sharp pace. United reported that the number of passengers boarded during September was down almost 8 percent from September 2007. The number of passengers flown on Continental’s mainline services dropped 15.7 percent during September year-over-year, while passenger numbers at American declined 10 percent. The decline in passengers was 4.6 percent at Delta, 5.6 percent at Southwest and 4.6 percent at US Airways.