Hawaiian Airlines Scores Again

I have mentioned several times here how much I like Hawaiian Airlines: great equipment, great service and an unmatched safety record.

Yesterday comes word through the Department of Transportation that Hawaiian led all other U.S. airlines in three categories for the month of January: on-time performance, fewest cancelled flights and fewest lost bags. (Hawaiian has won these recognitions numerous times in the past.) More than 90 percent of Hawaiian’s flights were on time during the month of January, compared to an industry average of 77 percent.

Considering all the inter-island flights Hawaiian operates every day – with flight times ranging from 20 to 45 minutes – that’s really an impressive record. Clearly, when an individual aircraft makes a dozen or more inter-island hops during a day, one delay early in the schedule can snowball and make every subsequent flight late.

Of course everyone wants to know who gets the booby prize for January. It goes to Delta’s Comair, which ran on time only 56.7 percent of the time.