Angry Traveler: late-breaking news for air travelers

Or not, depending on how frequently you fly. The stats released Monday by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics are sort of a good news/bad news report. First the good news: Almost 82% of flights arrived on time in September. That’s a definite improvement from August when that number was about 72% and a significant improvement from September 2006, when the number was about 76%.

And your bags were mishandled less frequently: Only 5.5 of you (pity the half) out of every 1,000 passengers didn’t meet up with your bags when you got off at your destination. The number was a little more than 7.5 in August and about 8.25 in September a year ago, right after we stopped carrying big bottles of liquids in our carry-on bags.

Now for the bad news (and this won’t be news to anyone who has flown this year): The year-to-date totals were the worst…

Are you running later than ever?

on-time performance in 13 years. Surprise. And 79 flights sat on the runway for at least three hours.

But why? Why are we so bollixed up? The picture becomes clearer when you look at the reasons for the delays: A big part of departure delays is … late-arriving aircraft. Surprise again. Everything runs in a circular motion…

— Catharine Hamm, Los Angeles Times Travel Editor

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6, 2007 at 3:48 pm by Catharine Hamm and is filed under Angry Traveler, Frequent Flier, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.