The 'Airline Quality Report' could use a little help

Read Michael Boyd’s criticism of the “Airline Quality Report” and see if you don’t end up agreeing with him about that group’s survey. A sample from Boyd:

"They (the airlines) just don't get it yet..."

No, its the authors of this lightweight report that don't get it. If they had a modicum of understanding of what's going on in the airline business, they'd not make such a stupid statement.

Boyd's comments can be read here:

For some more recent airline rankings, see yesterday’s post.

JetBlue scores poorly in February, as expected

JetBlue Airways was able to complete just 57.4% of its flights on time in February, ranking 19^th out of 21 airlines tracked by the Department of Transportation -- which isn’t news to anyone who was on one of its tarmac-stuck jets the week of Valentine’s Day.

In fact, the DOT recorded more complaints per passenger for JetBlue in February than any other airline.

JetBlue completed 68.6% of its flights in the last three months of 2006, about the same as in February 2007.

The DOT said that in February, 10% of JetBlue’s regularly scheduled flights were delayed 70% of the time, the poorest record of any airline that month. The airline also had 9.2% of its operations canceled in February.

The bright spot: JetBlue “bumped” the lowest rate of passengers in all of 2006.

Some other nuggets, according to the DOT’s report on April 2:

• U.S. Airways flight 154 from Philadelphia to San Francisco, scheduled to depart at 8:10 a.m., was late 100% of the time. Its 17 flights in February departed an average of 61 minutes late.
• 3 of the top 10 most delayed flights in February were scheduled to leave Newark, N.J., heading for Charlotte-Douglas.
• A little over half, or 53.1% of Northwest’s 452 arrivals in February at LAX were on time.
• For all carriers at Newark airport, arrivals were considered "on time" just 52.6% of the time.

Supreme Court declines to re-open United Airlines bankruptcy case for its pilots pension claim

The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear a case the Air Line Pilots Association appealed to the court, trying to reverse the takeover of their pension plan by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp. druing United Airlines' bankruptcy.

The pilots had already lost at the bankruptcy court level and again in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, both of which backed the PBGC, so this wasn't much of a surprise.

When the PBGC took over the plan in late 2004, the United Airlines' pilot pension plan was 49% percent funded, with $2.8 billion in assets to cover $5.7 billion in benefit liabilities, according to PBGC estimates.