Airport delays can be a costly inconvenience.
I once shelled out more than $250 to pay for meals, ground transportation, clothing and a hotel room during an 18-hour delay that eventually turned into a cancelled flight.
Of course, that paled in comparison to the emotional and physical price I paid when the cancellation caused me to miss my beloved grandmother’s wake.
Thanks, American Airlines.
My sad story is just one of thousands that are logged each year with the promise from airline execs that they will work to improve on-time reliability.
According to a recent report from the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), more than 79% of flights arrived on time during the first quarter of 2013.
If you are looking to save money by avoiding costly delays, consider booking your flight on Hawaiian Airlines. According to the report, the carrier posted the best on-time rate with 93% of its flights arriving within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival times. Alaska Airlines was second, followed by Delta, AirTran and US Airways.
Guess what airline had the worst on-time record?
Oh, yes, it is: American Eagle, the regional affiliate of American Airlines. Its flights were on-time a mere 66% of the time. Frontier had the second-worst on-time rate while ExpressJet – a regional carrier for American, Delta and United – had the third-worst.
As for the airports with the best and worst on-time arrival performance, avoid Newark at all costs. According to the federal report, it had the lowest on-time arrival performance of the 29 busiest airports for the January-April period. Meanwhile, Phoenix’s airport had the best on-time arrival performance during the first quarter of 2013. When it came to on-time departures, Portland, Oregon’s airport had the best record and Chicago O’Hare had the worst, according to the BTS report.
Another interesting tidbit found in the report had to do with the number of complaints filed by disgruntled passengers. In April 2013, the Department of Transportation received 1,086 complaints about airline service from flyers, up 1.8% from the 1,067 complaints filed in April 2012, and up 15.2% from the 943 received in March 2013.