As exciting as it is to fly on cheap airplane tickets or purchase cheap vacation packages, little is more frustrating than sitting in a plane for an extended/unknown period of time. This February there were no runway delays lasting longer than three hours vs. 61 such delays a year ago and 12 delays that lasted over four hours.
This improvement was driven by a new runway delay rule instituted by the Transportation Department a year ago April which punitively fines airlines who hold customers on runways in excess of three hours. Critics of this rule claim that it is resulting in a higher incidence of cancelled flights. The Transportation Department continues to dispute this claim.
U.S. airlines operated their domestic flights on time almost 75 percent in February which was slightly down from the prior month but better than their performance in February 2010.
The past two years the month of February experienced severe weather and higher than normal cancellation rates of 4.9 percent this year vs. 5.4 percent a year ago.
Regarding on-time performance, Hawaiian Airlines turned in the best performance with just shy of 92 percent of its flights arriving within 15 minutes of schedule. Among major airlines, AirTran turned in the best on-time performance slightly under 83 percent and JetBlue came in last with under 66 percent of its flight on-time. American Eagles performance was the worst of all carriers with under 63 percent of its flights arriving on-time. www.cheapfares.com