DALLAS (AP) — Spirit Airlines tops the latest ratings for on-time flights, a big turnaround for a discount carrier that consistently ranked as the tardiest airline in America three years ago.
Spirit also has the second-lowest rate of canceled flights in the latest government report.
It still has a high rate of passenger complaints, and some travelers avoid it and other budget airlines because of its reputation for poor service. If travelers come to see them as reliable, however, discount airlines could pose a greater threat to bigger competitors.
The Transportation Department said Friday that 89 percent of Spirit’s flights in October arrived on time, putting it just ahead of frequent winner Hawaiian Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
It’s the first time the Miramar, Florida-based carrier has topped the rankings. It finished second in November 2017.
Spirit had the worst on-time performance every month but one between May 2015 and May 2016.
Greg Christopher, the vice president in charge of Spirit’s operations control center, said: “We got a little bit smarter about how we scheduled.”
Spirit operates many red-eye flights, and some planes were scheduled to run nearly around the clock for two or three days. If bad weather or a mechanical problem caused a single flight to be delayed, “it just cascaded through the next 15, 20 flights,” Christopher said.
The airline tries to limit using the same plane for red-eyes on consecutive nights, and has added room to its schedule in other ways. More time was allowed after flights from delay-prone airports such as LaGuardia and Newark in the New York City area.
Spirit also moved to patch up relations with its pilots. In May 2017, the company went to court against the pilots union over what it called an illegal work slowdown that led to hundreds of canceled flights.
In February, the two sides agreed on a contract that gave pilots pay raises averaging 43 percent while providing Spirit more reserve pilots who can step in when another pilot calls in sick or can’t handle a flight because of federal crew rest rules.
The Transportation Department counts a flight as on time if it arrives within 14 minutes of schedule.
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