Southwest Airlines Lacks Behind In On-time Arrivals, Delta Is The New Winner
According to the monthly results released by the airline data behemoth OAG, Southwest Airlines plummeted to the bottom of the pack in August in the on-time arrivals.
What Is OAG?
OAG is an air travel intelligence company which is based in the United Kingdom. It provides digital information in relation to the world’s airlines, airports, government agencies and travel-related service companies.
Despite last month’s Hurricane Harvey which disrupted the operations of top airlines like Delta, United, and others. Well, Delta is considered as the new winner of the on-time arrival race as the airline manages to finish August with an impressive 83.8 percent of flights arriving on time.
As per the rules of United States Department of Transportation, a flight is considered on time if it reaches the gate within 14 minutes of the scheduled arrival time.
However, Delta’s exceptional performance is not a new thing that the airline achieved as it is selected the best before too as per OAG after releasing its June on-time arrival data.
But on the other side, Southwest Airlines is going through the operational issues are certainly dragging down the carrier’s performance in a big way. Southwest’s monthly on-time percentages have been in the mid-70s for much of the first half of the year.
As per the statement of Southwest Airlines spokesman on the carrier’s on-time performance in August, “While the Department of Transportation’s official on-time performance data for August has not been published yet for our comment, we can separately confirm that Southwest experienced the effects of summer thunderstorms, the unprecedented impact of Hurricane Harvey and the high summer load factors across our network, which created operational performance challenges during the month.”
Southwest faces major on-time arrival problems after it began to add more connecting flights to its schedule. And this leads to holding of planes for the passengers who couldn’t get to their connecting flights on time. It may take a long time to figure out and resolve this problem.
Talking about the Flight cancellations, all the major carriers like Delta, United, and others show different rates.
- Delta canceled only 9 percent of flights.
- United’s comes with the cancellation of 5 percent of its flight schedule in August.
- American canceled 1 percent of flights.
- Southwest canceled 8 percent.