DEC "ON-TIME" Stats

[WorldTraveler]

Sharon,
No one doubts that WN is trying to provide good customer service as well as remain safe. Every other airline honestly wants to do the same thing too.

You recognize that it is a balance regarding holding aircraft or not - but remember that there are people who run the risk of misconnecting or who are only flying from A to B and are not interested in WN's problems in accommodating connecting passengers. Further, many passengers WILL be impacted by a decision to hold a flight upline from their city. All they know is their flight is delayed so whatever good will you might have made for the passengers at MDW that made their connection evaporates when that plane goes through LAS and people their miss their connection because the flight could not make up time.

Jim,
no one is writing WN off; once again remember that all of the network carriers have had their time at the bottom of the on-time ranks and they managed to recover. But they all had to make significant changes in how that operated in order to get off the bottom of the list and they also lost a certain amount of their prestige because of the lack of reliability of their schedules. Remember that DL and Piedmont both had very high service reputations for years....
there is no guarantee that WN will remain with the service reputation they once had - or that they will fail to financially deliver even if some of their service metrics begin to look less like traditional WN and more like other network carriers.

 

[I'mRayFlyMe]

Notice how in post #22 our friendly topic starter mentioned how he's "done with this topic", hence conveniently choosing to ignore all the posts made since.

 

[I'mRayFlyMe]

Delta used to be famous for holding flights for connections but eventually they realized that you can inconvenience 80% and 100% of the downline passengers or a small percentage of passengers on the delayed flight.

Again, some of WN's operating policies are likely going to have to change. Operating in delay prone NE airports is bad enough but holding flights and then expecting downline stations to make up the operation with 25 minute turns sentences the entire operation to chaos... exactly as we are seeing.

True, but you're also comparing Delta's "hub and spoke" business model with Southwest's "point-to-point" business model.

 

[WorldTraveler]

Are you aware that WN connects about 50% of its passengers at MDW and BWI which is about the same percentage of connecting domestic passengers that DL has at ATL?
It is possible to calculate the percentage of connecting passengers based on several pieces of DOT data.
The notion that WN carries point to point passengers while other carriers predominantly carry connections is not accurate... WN is looking more and more like a network carrier when it comes to their network.
BTW, FL connects about 70% of its traffic at ATL so in order for WN to get its local traffic percentage up to 50%, they will have to stimulate the market a whole lot. And remember that FL uses smaller planes on average than WN.
DL used to carry about 70% connecting domestic traffic and realized that was not profitable -thus the move to shift their large fleet of domestic widebodies to int'l wherever possible. Now, FL is finding that 70% connecting traffic is not profitable so they have been shrinking ATL.
WN has its work cut out for it in order to turn FL's ATL operation around; they must stimulate the local market and add a whole lot of new destinations that FL hasn't served in order to grow their local traffic base - and based on how DL has held its market share against WN at SLC and FL at ATL, it isn't at all a given that WN will turn ATL into the huge operation that they are talking like it could be.

The primary point here is that WN is indeed a connecting airline and as their load factors rise, they do what other airlines have done before them - hold flights in order to try to minimize inconvenience to passengers - and when they hold flights, they create the same problems downline that other airlines have had before.
Holding flights is a short term fix but ultimately WN will have no choice but to change its operational policies and procedures, likely including adding ground time to some flights in order to provide the possibility to catch up when they can, keep more spare aircraft on hand, or not allow connections between some flights that are prone to delays.

 

[does this plane go to paris]

http://blog.thenewstribune.com/business/2011/01/03/holiday-storms-sour-airlines-on-time-performance-in-december/


Worst among the nine North American major carriers was Southwest with a 54.65 percent on-time record for December.

It's hard to underestimate the courage of the pilot's decision. The flight, which ultimately departed 12 minutes late, likely had hundreds of passengers rolling their eyes in contempt. And given that any delay has knock-on effects for passengers at the destination airport, his decision placed Southwest at risk of facing the wrath of travelers, and more than a few demands for compensation.

Elliott, who brought the story to the blogosphere's attention, approached Southwest about the story, half expecting the airline to be outraged by a pilot's refusal to push the on-time departure.

Instead, they told him they were "proud" of their pilot, a man who clearly understands that taking a child off life support has consequences that run deeper than a flight taking off late. As Nancy wrote: "My husband was able to take his first deep breath of the day." Hopefully, over time, his daughter can do the same. (Southwest Airlines Photos: The History of Co-Founder Herb Kelleher)