US airline performance continues to plummet
US airline performance measured by delays, mishandled baggage and customer complaints worsened last year, according to the US Department of Transportation (DOT).
Its Air Travel Consumer Report found consumer complaints among the 20 reporting airlines rose more than 17% over the previous year
Reports of mishandled baggage rose 6% over 2005. And US carriers had an on-time arrival rate of 77.4%, which was down from 78.1% in 2005.
“As usual, Hawaiian Airlines led the way with a sunny 94.2% on-time arrival rate,” reported ATW Daily News.
Perhaps ironically, the second best performing airline for on-time arrivals, Independence, is now defunct. The carrier was on-time almost 64% of the time, according to DOT.
Flights were ruled on time when they arrived no more than 15 minutes after the scheduled times.
The DOT report also showed that US airlines boarded 642 passengers last year, or 23 million more than the previous year.
There were 8,735 complaints reported by the DOT last year. These ranged from flight cancellations or delays, incomplete or incorrect information about fares, discrimination, customer service and lost or misplaced baggage.
In one area, carriers did show improvement.
US airlines cancelled just 1.9% of scheduled domestic flights last December compared to a year ago when the rate was 2.8%.
Hawaiian could be particularly proud in this area; they only cancelled 0.2% of flights.
Report by David Wilkening
David
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