No cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, or cheap vacation packages could offset the frustrations passengers used to experience when they were unexpectedly delayed on planes sitting on runways in excess of three hours. Fortunately, because of Department of Transportation (DOT) rules instituted a year ago in April, runway delays lasting three or more hours are largely a thing of the past.
March was the fourth month out of the last six where there were no runway delays that exceeded the DOTs three hour limit. There have only been 16 runways delays of more than three hours in the 11 months since DOTs rule went into effect compared to 689 such delays during the preceding 11 months.
U.S. airlines came out against this rule arguing that it would force them to substantially increase flight cancellations to avoid having to face onerous penalties for excessive runway delays. The rate of flight cancelations in March declined to 1.3 percent vs. 1.5 percent in March of 2010.
Hawaiian Airlines continued to lead the industry in on time performance with over 88 percent of its flights arriving on time with JetBlue turning in the poorest performance at only slightly higher than 71 percent. Overall US airlines had a little over 79 percent of their domestic flight arrive within 15 minutes of schedule vs. 80 percent a year ago. The historical average is about 78 percent.
Several other airline performance measurements were positive for the first quarter of 2011. The denied involuntary boarding rate decreased in comparison to the first quarter of 2010. Airlines involuntarily bumped an average of 0.9 passengers per 10,000 vs. 1.76 a year ago. The mishandled baggage rate fell to 3.32 reports per 1,000 passengers vs. 3.66 a year ago. www.cheapfares.com