Southwest lags in on-time arrivals

DALLAS — On Aug. 10, Southwest Airlines changed its schedule to improve its reliability and end a year of really bad results for on-time arrivals. Its executives said the new schedule should boost its on-time performance.

The good news from August’s report from the U.S. Department of Transportation: It’s off the bottom. Its on-time rate was up 1.5 percentage points from August 2013, when it first jimmied its schedule to squeeze more flights in.

And it did fare better than its North Texas neighbors. American Airlines and Envoy Air finished 13th and 14th, respectively.

The bad news: Southwest ranked 11th of 14 airlines in August, below the industry’s average and still a very subpar finish.

Of the biggest carriers, Delta Air Lines outclassed the others. American’s merger partner, US Airways, came next, followed by United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and American.

American’s record dropped the most of the 14 carriers ranked by the DOT. Its on-time record of 73.2 percent was 8.1 points worse than in August 2013.

The DOT considers a flight on time if it arrives within 14 minutes of schedule.

The DOT report says that 3.1 percent of Southwest’s regularly scheduled flights in August were late at least 70 percent of the time. The industry average was 0.9 percent. Excluding Southwest, the industry average was 0.3 percent.