Alaska Airlines Top US DOT On-Time Carrier

Summary US airlines’ on-time arrival rates dropped to 71.3% in June, down from 81.2% in May and 73.5% in June 2022.
Alaska Airlines was ranked as the most punctual airline and posted the lowest rate of canceled flights.
Complaints about airline service remain high, and mishandled baggage rates slightly increased compared to last year.
According to the latest Air Travel Consumer Report, US on-time arrival rates fell to 71.3% in June, compared to 81.2% in May and 73.5% in June last year. Alaska Airlines was ranked as the nation’s most on-time performer, and at the other end of the scale was Frontier Airlines.
Alaska Airlines on-time and reliable
On Wednesday, the US Department of Transportation (US DoT) released its Air Travel Consumer Report (ATCR) for airline operations in June. The report also includes some data on the first half of 2023, which shows some encouraging results with fewer cancelations than in the first six months of 2022.
The ATCR shows that in June, there were 600,721 domestic flights operated, which was 102.94% of the 583,584 operated in June last year but down 1.97% month-over-month from the 612,797 in May 2023. The report identifies that the ten marketing network carriers reported 613,577 scheduled domestic flights, but 12,856 (2.1%) were canceled, leaving 600,721 listed as operated.
Chart: US Dot ATCR
In June 2022, airlines scheduled 602,057 flights, of which 18,473 (3.1%) were canceled, while in May this year, they scheduled 616,630 domestic flights, with 3,833 (0.6%) canceled. For the first half of this year, the marketing carriers canceled 1.6% of flights, halving the 3.2% for the same period in 2022. To give an international perspective, Australia’s domestic airlines canceled 3.8% of flights in August, compared to 3.2% in August 2022 and the long-term average of 2.2%.
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In June, the reporting marketing carriers canceled 2.1% of their scheduled domestic flights, significantly higher than the 0.6% rate in May but lower than the 3.1% recorded in June 2022. The best-performing US airlines were Alaska Airlines Network (0.3%), Allegiant Air (0.6%) and Southwest Airlines which canceled 0.6% of flights in June. The airlines with the highest rate of cancelations were United Airlines Network at 4.5%, Frontier Airlines at 3.9% and JetBlue Airways at 3.5%.
Photo: Robin Guess I Shutterstock.
Punctuality fell in June, with the reporting marketing carriers posting an on-time arrival rate of 71.3%, dropping from 73.5% in June 2022 and 81.2% month-on-month, while 2023 year-to-date on-time performance is at 76.5%. The best performers were Alaska Airlines Network (79.4%), Delta Air Lines Network (77.8%) and Hawaiian Airlines (77.4%), while Frontier Airlines (53.7%), Spirit Airlines (58.8%) and JetBlue Airways (60.8%) are well off the pace.
Complaints about airline service
The DoT commented that it continues to receive a high volume of air travel service complaints and that the release of consumer complaint data is delayed because of the time needed to process this volume. It also said that it wanted to make clear that customer complaints