US DOT releases Air Travel Consumer Report for February

Airline Industry Information, April 3, 2002

AIRLINE INDUSTRY INFORMATION-(C)1997-2002 M2 COMMUNICATIONS LTD

The US Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report has revealed that flight delays and mishandled baggage reports decreased in February 2002.

The report includes data from the department's Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) on airline on-time arrivals and mishandled baggage reports, as well as information about consumer disability and service complaints for February.

According to information filed with the BTS, the 10 carriers reporting on-time performance posted an 84.7% on-time record in February, better than both January's rate of 81.0% and February 2001's 73.5%. America West Airlines had the best on-time arrival rate in February at 88.5%, while Alaska Airlines had the lowest percentage of on-time flights at 77.9%.

The consumer report also includes BTS data on the number of domestic flights cancelled by the reporting carriers. In February, the carriers cancelled 1.1% of their scheduled domestic flights, a lower rate than both January (1.7%) and February 2001 (3.3%). Alaska had the highest percentage of cancelled flights in February at 2.3%, while Continental had the lowest percentage of cancellations at 0.2%.

The 10 largest US carriers posted a mishandled baggage rate of 3.85 reports per 1,000 passengers in February, better than both January's rate of 4.69 and February 2001's rate of 4.88.

The DOT received 965 complaints about airline service in February, a 9.1% decrease from the 1,062 complaints filed in January and 22.9% fewer than the 1,251 filed in February 2001.

The department received a total of 51 disability-related complaints in February, more than double the 25 complaints received in January but slightly fewer than the 52 complaints filed in February 2001.

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