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Plane Truth is Ugly: Delays Top Million Mark

Complaints rise with delays, cancellations, baggage snafus

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

September 6, 2007

Yet that’s the figure posted by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation (DOT) in its report on delayed flights for the first seven months of this year.

It’s bad enough that airlines had more than a million delays through July but airlines are also being battered by a barrage of passenger complaints about congestion, cancellations, diversions, and wayward luggage. That adds up to the worst year ever for the 20 biggest airlines, the DOT report indicated.

In July alone, more than 13,400 flights were cancelled and 2,100 diverted, while the on-time arrival rate was 69.8 per cent – one of the worst monthly performances since the DOT started keeping such records 12 years ago.

Although American had the worst on-time record in July (63.4 per cent), US Airways drew the most complaints – for the fifth month in a row.

Passengers filed 1,455 complaints with the DOT in July, more than twice the number of July 2006 and the most in nearly seven years.

The DOT said the month’s worst individual flight in terms of on-time performance was Delta 1667 from John F. Kennedy International to Orlando. The New York-to-Florida flight was late 96.7 per cent of the time.

A Delta partner, Comair, had the most cancellations during the month (5.4 per cent).

On the positive side, Southwest had the best on-time arrival record (75.2 per cent) and both United and Northwest also topped 70 per cent.

Airlines blame bad weather, outdated technology, crew shortages, and crowded runways for the sorry summer numbers, but the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) fingers the proliferation of regional jets for stretching runways beyond capacity.

In the first seven months of the year, airlines operated 4.34 million flights and had an overall on-time arrival rate of 72.2 per cent, the DOT said. Over that same time span, however, more than 106,000 flights were cancelled – 2.4 per cent of the number scheduled.

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