First, many apologies for posting so late today!
The ltaest issue of the Air Travel Consumer Report was released a few days ago, and I always think it is worthwhile to take a look.
In terms of delays, there was a decent improvement in August 2008 compared to August 2007. The perecentage of on time operations for all reportable airports went up 6.7 points to 78.4%, up from 71.7%. The top five in this area were Hawaiian, Pinnacle, Skywest, Northwest, and Southwest. JetBlue was the worst with only a 64.7% ontime rating.
The number of mishandled bags decreased as well. In August 2007 there were 7.58 reports of mishandled bags per 1,000 passengers, but only 4.98 in August 2008. The top five in this category were Hawaiian, Northwest, AirTran, Frontier, and US Airways. Southwest was very close behind US Airways in this category.
Finally, my favorite – consumer complaints! Complaints went down slightly compared to August 2007 – 1.84 complaints per 100,000 enplanements to 1.22. Southwest was number one in this category with 0.22. The remaining airlines in the top five were Alaska, ExpressJet, Skywest, and Pinnacle. US Airways was the worst with 2.45 thought that is still a major improvement compared to its August 2007 number of 4.42.
The one airline that surprised me in terms of complaints was JetBlue. Last month its complaints were 0.59 per 100,000 enplanements but they were up to 2.19. I wonder what has caused such a jump.
Anyway, I’m more looking forward to next month’s report as we will see what the capacity cuts do to ontime percentage and these other statistics.
What I’d like to see in this report is an indication of the number of flights and passengers compared to the previous quarter and the same quarter last year. See, perhaps it’s easier to get your on-time rates up when there’s fewer pax or fewer flights. Same as it’s easier to get your lost luggage rates down when there’s less going through the system.
You mention next month’s report showing the impacts of capacity cuts and so on – well, I think we’re starting to see it with this month. Things were starting to slow down before the capacity cuts kicked in, so I’d say that could be helping to make these rates look better, no?
Grant, you make a fantastic point on the baggage that I neglected to make, and that should be a post later today. I think the checked bag fees have an effect, too.
In terms of the capacity cuts, there were less passengers flying in August 2008 than August 2007 and you are right that we’re already seeing their effects. Personally, I think it might be a bit more of a profound change in the report covering September, though.
Good point re: the checked bag fees – that too will help reduce the number of bags/items going through the system.
September’s figures promise to be very interesting indeed