Annual Airline Achievement Report Released 78
According to an annual report by Dean Headley, a business professor at Wichita State University, flying is getting slowly better. Lost bag reports, delayed flights, service complaints and cases of getting bumped from your flight were all slightly down in 2011. From the article: "Hawaiian Airlines did the best job of arriving on time with an average of 92.8 percent, while JetBlue Airways had the worst on-time performance, 73.3 percent. A flight is considered on time if it arrives within 15 minutes of when it was originally due. Nearly half the 15 airlines improved their on-time arrival performance in 2011, and seven had an on-time arrival percentage over 80 percent — Hawaiian, Southwest Airlines, AirTran Airways, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and Mesa Airlines. The average on-time performance for the industry was 80 percent last year, just a tad better than 2010's average of 79.8 percent."
Bag Fees = Fewer Lost Bag (Score:5, Interesting)
Lost bags are down, not because the airlines are getting better (or the panty sniffers in TSA aren't stealing your junk) but because fewer people are checking bags because of stupidly high bag check fees.
Re:Games airlines play (Score:5, Interesting)
The flight time listed for ATL-> RIC when purchasing tickets is about 90 minutes, but the time from takeoff to touchdown is only 63 minutes.
Do they list 'flight time' or 'travel time?' Usually it's the latter - Travel time. In this scenario, time spent on the tarmac taxiing should be factored into the equation.
Analyzing the wrong statistics (Score:2, Interesting)
This report looks at almost none of the statistics that I care about when flying. IDBs are rare enough that doubling or halving the rate doesn't matter to me, I've never been IDB'd. I rarely care if my flight is 15-20 minutes late getting to my final destination. The time to wait for checked bags, get a taxi, get through customs/immigration usually vary more than that anyways. I do get royally pissed off, though, if I have to make a connecting flight, and the later flight leaves on time when the earlier flight is late, stranding me for hours. How about some statistics on that? When a airline runs a route, say, back and forth between Chicago and Newark several times a day, if the route falls behind early in the day, instead of progressively letting the later flights run late, they'll just cancel a flight in the middle, and voila, the later flight is "on time", potentially stranding hundreds of fliers. I wonder how this situation plays out in these statistics?
Re:Games airlines play (Score:5, Interesting)
How's that a "game"? Sounds like good planning.
Don't you ever leave 10 minutes early to ensure you make an appointment on time? Is that also considered a "game"?
Hmm... I think I'd rather that was my responsibility or risk.
The first train I catch to visit my parents used to have a scheduled time of 72 minutes. There is only one intermediate stop. It used to arrive about a minute or two early, and very occasionally five minutes late -- generally if there was a big football match at the intermediate stop's town. Now, the time is supposedly 77 minutes. However, the train still arrives at the same time -- so it's normally 6-7 minutes early.
Many people change trains at this station, and the journey planning software allows some time (5 minutes?) to do that. Previously, with a scheduled arrival of 18:00 it would recommend taking the 18:06 train to somewhere else. But, even though the first train still arrives at 17:59, the journey planner now recommends waiting for the next half-hourly train at 18:36. That makes the journey seem half an hour longer, which makes people less likely to use the train in the first place. If you actually do the journey, you get a pleasant surprise if you get there, realise there's another train leaving in a couple of minutes, and arrive 30 minutes earlier than you expected to.
I wouldn't rely on making that close connection for a job interview, a wedding, or an unflexible flight. But I could easily rely on it for work, and I'd certainly take the risk for leisure trip.