Complaints Decrease As Well; Five Flights Stranded On Ground Over Four Hours

The nation's largest airlines had a higher rate of on-time flights this past February than in either February of last year or in January 2009, according to the Air Travel Consumer Report released Thursday by the US Department of Transportation. 

According to information filed with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), the 19 carriers reporting on-time performance recorded an overall on-time arrival rate of 82.6 percent in February, an improvement over both February 2008's 68.6 percent and January 2009's 77.0 percent.

The best performing airlines when it came to on-time arrival rates were Hawaiian Airlines, 91.2 percent on-time; Southwest Airlines, 88.3 percent; and Pinnacle Airlines, at 86.8 percent. Lowest performing carriers in this regard were Alaska Airlines at 76.3 percent; Comair, 76.6 percent; and Continental Airlines, and 77.7 percent of flights arriving within 15 minutes of scheduled times.

The dubious honor of "most frequently late flight" in February fell to Delta Air Lines Flight 2008, an MD-88 run from Savannah to Atlanta -- which arrived late at the gate 94.12 percent of the time.

In February, the reporting carriers canceled 1.2 percent of their scheduled domestic flights, a lower rate than both the 3.6 percent cancellation rate of February 2008 and the 2.3 percent rate posted in January 2009. Passengers also reported fewer lost items of luggage, and submitted fewer complaints.

Airlines filing on-time performance data reported .00009 percent of their scheduled flights had tarmac delays of three hours or more, down from .0002 percent in January. There were five flights with tarmac delays of four hours or more in February, the most egregious being a 259-minute delay for US Airways Flight 1165 from Philadelphia to Charlotte, NC.

When it came to cancelled flights, American Airlines scrapped the most in February, a full 2.2 percent of its schedule. Hawaiian canceled the fewest, just 0.1 percent.

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