Delta notches stellar March operations performance

Delta employees hit it out of the operational park in March, topping the charts with the fewest cancellations and taking second place in on-time and baggage performance¹ among the 12 carriers tracked in the Department of Transportation Air Travel Consumer Report, published Monday.

With 99.9 percent of flights completed as scheduled, the measure known as completion factor, Delta finished ahead of second-place Hawaiian Airlines and third-place JetBlue. American Airlines took fourth with United in sixth. Frontier Airlines finished in last place with a 97.4 percent rating.

For the month, Delta added 25 perfect domestic completion factor days, bringing the first quarter total to 58, nine more than American, Alaska, JetBlue, United and Southwest combined and 19 more than where Delta was at during the same period last year.

Delta’s on-time performance of 87.9 percent ranked second behind Hawaiian’s 89.8 and ahead of third-place finisher Alaska Airlines, which saw 86.4 of its flights arrive within 14 minutes of the scheduled arrival time. Spirit Airlines came in last with 64.6 percent of flights arriving on-time.

The airline’s baggage performance showed similar strong results with Delta taking a second-place ranking of 1.57 reports of mishandled bags, less than half of network carrier American Airlines at 3.19. Virgin America took the top spot with 0.82 reports.²

[1] Based on DOT Air Travel Consumer May 2016 Report statistics for March 2016 on-time arrival based on domestic flights flown and completion rate based on domestic flights scheduled, compared to all carriers reporting to the DOT. 

[2] Based on DOT Air Travel Consumer May 2016 Report statistics for March 2016 mishandled bags per 100,000 enplanements for domestic flights scheduled, in each case compared to the four largest domestic carriers reporting to the DOT: Southwest Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines.