Another month, another report from the US Department of Transportation. I know I’m weird, but I always enjoy digging through these to see what sort of nuggets I can find. The latest report, issued August 5, reports data from the month of June.
The Latest Flight of the Month Award: This one is a three-way split.
-American 1639 from JFK to San Juan was late 100% of the time by an average of 128 minutes,
-Comair 5292 from Minneapolis to JFK was late 100% of the time by an average of 123 minutes, and
-Southwest 2709 from Houston to San Diego was late 100% of the time by an average of 50 minutes.
The “I Always Thought It Was Newark?” Award: Airports with the latest arrival and departure percentages for the month were, respectively, Marquette, Mich. at 40.2% and Crescent City, Calif. at 53.3%. Newark, by comparison did relatively great at 51.4% and 59.8% for arrivals and departures.
The First to Worst Award: One would think being on-time would generate fewer complaints, right? Less people inconvenienced. Natch. Then how come US Airways was best in on-time performance among the large, legacy airlines, but three one-hundredths of a point away from last place in the “consumer complaints” category? Answer: US Airways had more complaints about poor customer service than any of the majors.
The Not-So-Frequent Flier Award: Goes to Mesa Airlines for canceling the most flights (4.3% of its schedule, or 955 flights) for the month.
The America’s Most Frequent Flier Award: Frontier Airlines wins this one. It canceled only 20 of its 8,600 scheduled flights (that’s 0.2%, which is a really small number).
The “I smell a stink a’brewin” Award: This one goes to all those airlines that charge for checked bags. They’d better hang onto their hats, if they haven’t blown off already. The industry took 281,404 mishandled baggage reports in June, and nearly half of those were from airlines that now charge fees to check luggage. The fees haven’t caught up with the DOT’s report yet, but wait until the people who have paid to have their bags lost, rather than getting that fun service for free, start complaining to the government.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this report in the months to come. I’ll keep my eye on it and let you know.
