US airlines: continuing to run behind schedule
American Airlines Flight 1659 departing every afternoon from the Newark Liberty International Airport to Chicago arrives late 84% of the time but it’s only one example of the growing problem of late airline arrivals and departures.
And when Flight 1659 was late, it was really late — an average of 87 minutes behind schedule. That’s about the time it takes for the plane to actually fly the route.
More than 100 domestic flights are officially late — by at least 15 minutes — 70% or more of the time, says the US Transportation Department in an analysis of a year’s flight schedules.
Worse: most of those arrive, on average, more than an hour later than scheduled.
“It is such an unbelievable mess out there,” Cheryl Geib, corporate travel manager for the Grant Thornton accounting firm, told The New York Times.
But the worst flights still draw a lot of passengers.
“For many, the air travel system is in such disarray — planes stranded for eight hours on a snowy tarmac, flights canceled when pilots do not show up — that it might be foolhardy to try to guess where trouble lurks,” says the Times.
The newspaper says there may be some relief as a summer of widespread flight cancellations and delays comes to an end. But the long-term outlook is not good.
The reasons include an overtaxed air traffic control system that is probably at least a decade away from being replaced.
Another problem is a handful of big hub airports that at times are operating above their practical capacity.
The Transportation Department earlier this year said it was investigating domestic airlines for publishing unrealistic schedules. It said it was considering levying fines on as many as eight carriers.
Since then, some airlines have held discussions with the agency, but no formal action has been taken.
“A variety of consumer protections are under consideration,” said a spokesman for the department, Bill Mosley. One of these is to require airlines to report chronically delayed flights before passengers buy airline tickets.
Some travel specialists agree that more realistic schedules would go a long way toward solving the delay problem.
Report by David Wilkening
David
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