Alaska still near bottom for on-time rankings

Only JetBlue had fewer on-time flights. Even so, it’s an improvement over last January’s performance when 71 percent of Alaska’s flights were on time. Alaska ranked 11^th for January 2005 as other airlines had lower on-time percentages a year ago.  

While Alaska Airline’s on-time performance and number of flight cancellations were impacted by eruptions of the St. Augustine volcano in Alaska, overall the effect was fairly small, said Shawn Shelley, manager of operational performance.  

The airline canceled 39 flights in the state of Alaska due to the volcano, out of a total of 372 domestic flights canceled for the month. A number of flights were also rerouted to avoid the volcano ash, which might have contributed to the number of delays in the state of Alaska, but probably impacted the overall on-time performance percentage by less than 2 percent, Shelley said.  

The 71.2 percent number means employees are not eligible for the Operational Performance Rewards (OPR) payout of $50 for the month. The airline needed 78 percent on-time performance to reach the monthly goal for January.  

Alaska also had the highest percentage of flights that were late 70 percent of the time or more, with 1.4 percent, and ranked fourth highest for number of flight cancellations, with 2.9 percent.  

Eighteen consumers complained to the DOT about problems with Alaska flights in January, which comes to a total of 1.45 complaints per 100,000 enplanements, or third worst of the 19 largest airlines.

In more positive news, Alaska had the fourth-best record for number of mishandled bags, with 4.48 lost bag reports for every 1,000 passengers in January. No animals were injured, lost or died on Alaska flights.