Joe Brancatelli is editor and publisher of JoeSentMe.com, a website for business travelers. He is also the former executive editor of Frequent Flier magazine, travel advisor of Travel Holiday and contributing editor to Travel + Leisure.
American Is Still the Nation's Least-Reliable Airline
American Is Still the Nation's Least-Reliable Airline
Ouch.Tuesday, July 10, 2007, 10:05 PM
About a month ago I called American Airlines the nation's least-reliable carrier based on its bad on-time record, high cancellations and poor baggage-handing efficiency. I see no reason to change my call now. According to statistics just released by FlightStats.com, American ran just 58.7 percent on-time in June, a fraction of a percent better than US Airways, which has been at the bottom of the Big Six for four consecutive months. American's cancellations skyrocketed, too. It dumped more than 2,000 flights in June, compared to just 421 last year. Its percentage of excessively delayed flights (45 minutes or more off-schedule) more than doubled to 21.3 percent. American's average delay in June was 72 minutes, up from 59 minutes last year. American, of course, blames the lousy weather in North Texas in June and claims that the bad storms fouled up its crucial Dallas/Fort Worth hub. But weather isn't much of an answer: Southwest Airlines, which maintains a big operation at Dallas/Love Field, just a few miles from DFW, had only 100 systemwide cancellations in June. And bad weather in North Texas certainly wouldn't explain the miserable performance of Executive Airlines, one of American's wholly owned American Eagle commuter carriers. Executive is much less focused on DFW, but its June numbers were equally dreary: 60.8 percent on-time, 17.7 percent of flights excessively delayed and more than 2,700 cancellations, a 5.9 percent cancellation rate. That's actually worse than the cancellation percentage racked up by Northwest Airlines in June.