Actual Arrival Times May Vary... A Lot

It may be hard to believe... but several domestic airlines are publishing flight schedules the carriers know to be, at best, dazzlingly optimistic... and at worst, horribly inaccurate.

That's the word from the Department of Transportation, anyway, which last week said it has launched an investigation into the alleged inaccurate scheduling. The New York Times states as many as eight airlines face potential fines for failing to tell the truth in their flight schedules.

An unnamed DOT spokesman told the paper the agency has contacted airlines 160 times for information about delays on specific flights... requests the carriers failed to heed 41 percent of the time.

Information the DOT was able to collect shows 143 flights in February that were late 15 minutes or more, at least 80 percent of the time.

The agency also found one US Airways flight that, literally, is NEVER on time. On average, Flight 154 from Philadelphia to San Francisco arrives 61 minutes behind its published arrival time.

News like that does not sit well with lawmakers, meeting to determine whether federal action is necessary to insure the rights of passengers on airline flights, as the summer travel -- and storm -- season looms.

“I was pretty exasperated,” said House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman James L. Oberstar (D-MN). “They don’t learn from each other,” he added, in reference to carriers failing to learn from the mistakes of their competitors.

The airlines state federal interaction is unnecessary, and the problems would best be left to the individual carriers to solve.

Airlines want to be left alone to deal with the problems, and the Transportation Department has thus far mostly agreed with that approach. But some in Congress feel otherwise.

FMI: www.dot.gov, www.airlines.org