Delta Regional Posts Dismal Performance, Including One Flight Stranded Over 7.5 Hours

The nation's largest airlines had a higher rate of on-time flights this past January than in either January of last year or in December 2008, according to the Air Travel Consumer Report released Wednesday by the US Department of Transportation.  

According to information filed with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the 19 carriers reporting on-time performance recorded an overall on-time arrival rate of 77.0 percent in January, an improvement over both January 2008's 72.4 percent and December 2008's 65.3 percent. The carriers canceled 2.3 percent of their scheduled domestic flights, also a lower rate than both the 2.9 percent cancellation rate of January 2008 and the 3.3 percent rate posted in December 2008.

Hawaiian Airlines posted the highest on-time arrival rate, with 90.8 percent of its flights arriving at the gate within 15 minutes of scheduled time. Southwest Airlines came in second, at 83.3 percent; somewhat surprisingly, Continental regional carrier ExpressJet came in third, at 79.8 percent... a notable improvement from December 2008 figures.

Lowest on-time figures continued to be dominated by regional airlines, with Delta subsidiaries Comair and Atlantic Southeast Airlines posting dismal rates of 56.7 and 68.3 percent on-time arrivals, respectively. Alaska Airlines rounded out the bottom three at 71.5 percent.

BTS says carriers reported .0002 percent of their scheduled flights had ramp delays of three hours or more in January, down from .0003 percent in December. There were 16 flights with ramp delays of four hours or more in January, including at least five stranded
on the ramp five hours or more.

The worst offender, Comair Flight 6331 from Cincinnati to Pittsburgh, was stuck on the ramp a staggering 458 minutes -- over 7 1/2 hours -- on January 28. Comair also claimed the booby prize for most delayed flights -- dominating the bottom five with flights arriving later than scheduled times over 90 percent of the time -- and for the highest rate of cancelled flights.

BTS is still working to sort out its data from October, November, December and January for cancelled and diverted flights, and for flights with multiple gate departures, after being called on the carpet for erroneous reporting last year. Those updated stats are slated to be released on March 23.

FMI: http://airconsumer.dot.gov/