The Best and Worst U.S. Airlines in August

Worst On-Time Arrival Performance

1. United Continental — 72.2%

The bad news: United Continental’s on-time performance continued to bring up the rear in August as it struggles with integration challenges. The good news: The carrier was able to recover from its historic on-time performance low of 64.1% in July. In Thursday’s third-quarter earnings call, UAL CEO Jeff Smisek admitted that weaker performance metrics played a role in slashing the airline’s quarterly profit by $6 million, and revenue by 2.6%. “We recognize that some of our customers chose to fly other airlines during the summer when our operational performance degraded,” he said.
Runners Up:
2. JetBlue (NASDAQ:JBLU) — 73.7%
3. ExpressJet Airlines, regional subsidiary of SkyWest (NASDAQ:SKYW) — 74.7%
(While these on-time stats are nothing to write home about, ExpressJet’s numbers actually reflect a six-percentage point improvement over July.)

How Other Major Airlines Stack Up:
AMR’s (PINK:AAMRQ) American Airlines — 75.8%
Southwest (NYSE:LUV) — 79.6%