Travelers flying because of the plentiful supply of cheap airplane tickets and discount travel packages should be pleased to hear that there were no three hour runway delays in November, equaling the same outstanding performance achieved in October.
Airline compliance with the Federal Aviation Administrations rule concerning extended runway delays has not come at the expense of overall flight cancellation rate according to the Department of Transportation. Domestic airlines canceled 0.7 percent of their flights in November, down from 0.97 percent in October, and up slightly from 0.5 percent a year ago.
There have been a total of 12 runway delays that exceeded the three hour limit since the rule became effective at the end of April, down from 550 during the same seven month period in 09. Cumulatively extended runway delays are running down 98 percent.
In November a little over 83 percent of scheduled domestic flights arrived within 15 minutes of schedule which was similar to Octobers performance but down from almost an 89 percent rate in November of 09.
Only two airlines achieved an on-time rate of better than 90 percent: Hawaiian came in first followed by United. The three major airlines turning in the poorest on time performances for November all had on time arrivals of under 80 percent: Southwest, JetBlue and Skywest.
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