THE most punctual airlines have been revealed in a new report from the US Department of Transportation (DOT).
And for passengers who don’t want to be stuck on a delayed flight, Frontier Airlines is the carrier that they should avoid.
In its monthly Air Travel Consumer Report, the DOT details the quality of service received by air passengers using data collected from different sources.
A major section of the report is on flight delays, which is collated using data that’s submitted to the government by airlines themselves.
According to the report, “it covers nonstop operated and marketed scheduled-service flights
between points within the United States (including territories) by the seventeen (17) U.S. air carriers that have at least 0.5 percent of total domestic scheduled-service passenger revenues.”
The January 2020 edition of the report ranked the different airlines included in the report according to their punctuality in the last year, using flight data for journeys between January and November 2019.
The report revealed that Hawaiian Airlines was the most punctual airline – on average, 87.7 per cent of its flights were considered on time, which was miles ahead of other carriers.
In the last year, it was consistently the most punctual airline every month except October, when it came in sixth, likely due to a strike by cabin crew.
In second place was Delta, the biggest airline in the US, which saw an average of 83.5 per cent of its flights on time.
This is followed by Alaska Airlines in third place and Southwest Airlines in fourth.
On the opposite end of the spectrum was Frontier Airlines – just 72.9 per cent of its flights were on time, meaning that on average, more than a quarter of flights were delayed.
The airline also came bottom six times out of 11 last year.
In ninth place was JetBlue, which also saw more than a quarter of its flights delayed on average.
Just slightly better was United Airlines in eighth place, with 75.1 per cent of flights on time on average.
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And one set of unlucky passengers travelled for 36 hours before landing back where they had started.
Sun Online Travel has contacted Frontier Airlines for comment.