Hawaiian Airlines sees another month of great on-time performances

In what be looked at as some good news for a change, U.S. Airlines saw more on-time flights in April and less passengers stranded on the tarmac according to a report released Thursday from the Transportation Department.

Of the 18 airlines that were covered in the report, the on-time performance for April was a little over 85 percent. That is up from the 79.1 percent a year prior and 80 percent in March.

The 15 percent of delays reported were thanks to planes arriving late and system delays like heavy traffic and bad weather. 

So which airlines performed the best last month? Coming in first was Hawaiian Airlines, followed by Alaska Airlines and U.S. Airways. American Airlines ranked the lowest among the major carriers with its sister plane American Eagle coming in dead last among all airlines.

With the new tarmac delay rule in full effect, which fines airlines up to $27,500 per passenger left on the runway longer than three hours, only four planes were stuck on the tarmac that long. That is down tremendously from the 81 planes that were left on the runway for over three hours in April 2009.

Airlines also improved their baggage handling, which is a good thing since most now charge passengers. Carriers had a 2.89 per 1,000 passenger mishandled baggage rate in April, down from 3.89 a year earlier and 3.72 in March.

Airlines grounded about half the amount of flights in April 2010 then they did in April 2009. Continental Airlines had the lowest amount of canceled flights, SkyWest Airlines nixed the most.

However even with all the good news released today, there was bound to be a little bad news as well. Although airlines improved greatly in April, some passengers were not happy with their service as 878 complaints were filed in April, up from 782 in April 2009. 

Source: Associated Press