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Hawaiian's claim to top on-time performance rank subject to certain regions, flights
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Hawaiian's Transpacific services are operated by Boeing 737-300ER aircraft, like the one pictured here (Flickr/p4056860)
I love the Department of Transportation’s Air Travel Consumer Report. It’s like the monthly Airline Olympics, clearly ranking our nation’s air carriers performance in a variety of metrics, including on-time performance, consumer complaints, and baggage handling. They really should give out medals. This information is marketing gold to airlines because it allows them to celebrate their accomplishments in triumphant advertising campaigns (such as USAirways recent “On Time” campaign, which has come back to haunt them in the latest report, which ranked them in 9th place in On-time performance in January, 2009, and 5th overall for 2008) and make efforts to correct their deficiencies. While most airlines can (and have) find some obscure quality survey that ranks them better than all the rest, the DOT survey is still the veritable Bhagavad Gita of airline performance.
One particular item of note this month is Hawaiian Airlines. Hawaiian Air has long marketed and presented itself as “America’s Most On-Time Airline”. They’ve even designed their own blue ribbon for the entry page of their website. And the numbers are impressive. Hawaiian topped the list in on-time performance every quarter in 2008, with numbers hovering in the 90% range, which is about as good as it gets, as some delays are unavoidable; after all, nobody’s perfect, especially not in the airline industry.
But Hawaiian is a unique carrier. While most airlines carve up their route systems into regions, they’re pretty operationally homogenous. (For the purpose of the survey, most carrier’s “express” or “connection” affiliates are listed by operating carrier, not the major airline whose colors they operate under). Hawaiian can almost be considered two airlines, with two fleets, and the two rarely intermingle. 767-300’s operate from Hawai’i to the Mainland, and 717’s operate within Hawai’i. And while Hawaiian’s operations are considered contiguous for the overall statistic, there appears to be a marked difference in on-time performance between the two halves of the operation. The reason this comes to mind is because of the response I get from most people when I mention Hawaiian has the best on-time record in the industry: “Really? You’re kidding.” The response usually leads into a story about some horrific half-day long delay on a Hawaiian flight. So while those traveling interisland enjoy chart-topping punctuality, those traveling to Hawai’i from the Mainland see a vastly different operation. Observe Hawaiian’s on-time performance from the 33 “Reportable Airports” in the January 2009 DOT survey, which include all of Hawaiian’s Mainland stations with the exception of Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento.
Flights Operated On-Time January 2009
Hawaiian Air / Overall Airport Average / Carrier Rank
Las Vegas 61.3% / 81.8% / 14th of 14
Los Angeles 45.2% / 82.8% / 15th of 15
Portland 66.1% / 77.9% / 11th of 12
Phoenix 32.3% / 83.5% / 15th of 15
San Diego 45.2% / 81.9% / 14th of 15
Seattle 59.8% / 71.5% / 10th of 12
San Francisco 32.3% / 73.5% / 14th of 14
Granted, Hawaiian is working on both sides of the Law of Large Numbers (You know, it’s the same mathematical certainty that casinos use that says the longer you play, the more you lose). In Phoenix and San Francisco, for example, the airline only operates one daily flight. So with 31 flights to each city in January 2009, only ten flights operated on time. So when you only have one shot each day to make the flight on-time, a string of bad days in a row really packs a wallop. But why the consistently poor on-time performance to each “reportable” Mainland airport, when airport and other air carrier averages seem to be normal? It absolves weather, or the airport itself of blame for the delays.
The same Law of Large numbers doesn’t seem to have ensnared other carriers as badly as Hawaiian, either. At San Francisco, Air Tran Airways operated only 33 flights in January, just two more than Hawaiian, yet 60.6% (roughly 20) of their flights operated on time. At Portland, JetBlue operated five more flights in January than Hawaiian (and from the on-time performance sinkhole that is JFK), yet 80% of those were on time compared to Hawaiian’s 66%. And at LAX, Mesa operated the same number of flights as Hawaiian, yet nearly twice as punctual (88% to Hawaiian’s 45%).
So compared with several hundred daily flights operated mostly on-time between the Hawaiian Islands, 14 or so daily flights to the US Mainland might seem like a drop in the bucket, but when half the flights operated on those “premier” long haul services are late (48.2% to be exact, at the seven “reportable” Mainland airports), it starts to look a lot worse than the overall average might lead one to expect.
The nation’s most on-time airline also operated 2 flights more than 15 minutes late more than 70% of the time in January 2009. That’s the same flight, every day. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s 1% of the carrier’s total departures, compared with an average of .4% of the total flights in the survey. Of Hawaiian’s delayed flights, 77% were attributed to “Air Carrier Delay”. That’s a broad term that means “Anything that’s the airline’s fault.” So no weather/air traffic/late inbound aircraft/security. It’s all on the airline. Compare that with an industry average of 24.9% air carrier delay (the most popular culprit is Air Traffic Control).
Bottom Line: While the nation’s “most on-time airline” still tops the overall charts for on-time performance, their Transpacific operations have a truly abysmal on-time performance, and it’s mostly Hawaiian’s own fault.
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