The Best (and Worst) Airlines. Scott McCartney, The Middle Seat Blog, WSJ.com
On the whole, it was a mediocre year for airline reliability, the second-worst of the past five in terms of on-time arrivals (2011 was slightly worse), according to FlightStats. And it was the worst of the last five in delays over 45 minutes. That's surprising. There were fewer flights flown than any year of the past nine because of airline mergers and capacity reductions. Less-crowded skies and airports ought to yield speedier service.
Part of the problem is because of that reduced capacity. This means that flights are fuller, take longer to board, and are increasingly experiencing delays because of this. Not mentioned in this article, but something that I've noticed on several flights, are the airlines scheduling itself. It is hard to find an International route that does not have at least two layover options of less than one hour. In many airports this is difficult in the best of situations, especially when a terminal change is needed. On most International flights (and even a few domestic) I've noticed increased wait times for late arriving connecting flights, usually International ones.
Also ridiculous, at times, is the airlines expectation for departure. I've seen non-delayed United flights scheduled to depart five minutes after the plane hits the gate, and the connecting flight was listed as "on time". This is horrendous scheduling by any measure. This is not an article to pick on United, Southwest Airlines was the leading driver in bringing the delay numbers down.
United and American Airlines are currently tied in the race to the bottom, with only American placing in the top 50th percentile in any category, they rank 4th in passenger bumping, United ranks dead last in that category. Oddly enough, Delta is the leading major legacy carrier, coming in just behind Alaska Airlines to finish in second place overall. This caps a year where Delta is seemingly getting everything right, from their profitability to their operations they are running circles around their main rivals. It does help that they've had several years now to work through merger issues. Perhaps there's a chance United and American can follow suit eventually?
As it currently stands things are getting worse, not better. And the improvements through synergies that customers were promised when all of these mergers went down are currently not materializing. An acquaintance of mine quipped, upon hearing the suggestion that International airlines should be allowed to compete on domestic routes, that "once the Internationals got over here and saw how poorly things are ran, they'd decrease service but charge extra for the appearance that theirs was better." There is a lot of truth to this. From a gutting of loyalty programs to demanding customers pay more, what we're now seeing is that the return for this is a whole lot less on most airlines.
It is imperative they get this fixed, because we're already hearing rumbles from an increasingly intrusive-minded federal government that re-regulation is the way to go. That would be a disaster, leading to a return of sky-high fares, limited options and horrible, much worse than current, service.
Get it fixed folks.
