Summer Travel May drop, On-time Airline and Baggage Handling Improves
The economy is still not looking good. That is why many are still cutting down their expenses, usually sacrificing the usual summer travel.
United States air companies are expecting a 7 percent decrease in travel this summer. The global recession is affecting the season’s travel demand.
ATA of the Air Transport Association of America estimates 195 million passengers to travel with U.S. airlines from June 1 until August 31. This is below last year’s 209 million summer travels.
With less demand, airlines decided to also decrease the supply. Additional aircrafts may not be used to cut seat capacity this season and still keep planes full.
This month, 7 of the 9 large U.S. carriers declared traffic decline, thereby increasing load factors.
It is just sad that travel is declining when airlines are performing better.
U.S. carriers’ on-time performances and luggage handling have improved this March compared to a year a go, though February performances are better.
Atlantic Southeast Airlines, part of SkyWest Inc. and feeder for Delta Air Lines Inc., is March’s worst on-time performer while Hawaiian Airlines was the best.
Last March, total on-time performance rate of 19 carriers is 78.4 percent. This is up from last year’s 71.6 percent, yet down from February’ 2009’s 82.6 percent.
7.29 percent of March’s delay (6.58 percent of February’s) was due to aviation system interruptions. Then, 6.49 percent of the delays were due to late plane arrival (4.76 of February’s), 4.84percent (4.17 of February’s) are airline controlled problems like maintenance or crew troubles, 0.62 percent were due to bad weather and 0.04 percent because of security factors.
March local flight cancellations are only 2.1 percent, lower than last year’s 2.6 percent yet higher than February’s 1.2 percent.
Mishandled baggage rates also improved with only 4.12 reports every 1000 March passengers.
There were only 705 known service complaints last March, better than the 1011 complaints in 2008, yet still worse than February’s 576 complaints.
With legacy carriers, Northwest Airlines had the highest on-time arrival percentage, making it at the fourth-top overall. While among discount carriers, Southwest was the most on-time last March.
Delta flights had the longest tarmac interruptions at 5 hours. Delta had a 73.9 percent on-time arrival rate last March, putting it at 16th place out of 19 airlines.
Yet overall, air travel improved last March. Hopefully with these figures, more vacationers will consider air travel this summer.
