Worst summer ever for air travel?
Maybe. Maybe not. But this is a prediction made by many. Just plane awful, they are saying.
“This looks as though another miserable summer for air travelers is arriving. Delays in the United States last year were the worst ever, and this year could break even that grim record,” wrote The Economist.
“The whole system is more vulnerable to shocks, and that could impact consumers,” said Bill Warlick, an airline analyst at Fitch Ratings. “The passenger experience is going to be tested.”
New airline numbers are not encouraging, either. They show an overall on-time arrival rate of 77.9% in May, down from 78.3% for the same month last year.
Maybe not, says travel expert/writer Christopher Elliott.
“First of all, friends, we’re only a few days into summer. So let’s not jump to any conclusions yet. It doesn’t look good, that’s true, but we don’t know if it’s going to be that bad, either,” he adds.
FlightStats ran some numbers from Jan. 1 to June 15. The result? The “summer” in its early days is not dramatically worse than this spring, in terms of airline delays and cancellations.
For example:
The average delay for the first half of June was 61 minutes, comparable to a year ago when it was 54 minutes.
“Early June consistently suffers a higher average delay than the preceding five months,” said FlightStats’ Meara McLaughlin,
Flight cancellations are up 191% for the first half of last month. But in March it was up 168%, and it April it was up 147%.
“The number of excessive delays for the first two weeks of June look pretty damning, too. They’re up a whopping 161% from the same period last year. But breathe deeply, friends. It wasn’t as bad as February, when excessive delays were an eye-popping 184% higher than they were in February of 2006,” said Mr Elliott.
And March, April and May were bad as well — up 108%, 117% and 111%, respectively.
The last two weeks of June will also reflect the Northwest cancellations, which throws off the average statistics. So it’s still too early to predict that this will be the “worst” summer.
Concludes Mr Elliott:
“Bottom line: for now, at least, it would be more accurate to say we’re having a bad year for air travel, not just a bad summer.”
Report by David Wilkening
David
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