Even with Delta’s CrowdStrike meltdown in July, it still had better on-time arrivals performance for the month than American. The latter was certainly more impacted by weather, but the results are still striking.
According to data from airline analytics firm Cirium, Alaska Airlines was the most on-time for July – followed by United. Delta, the perrennial champ, came in third thanks to their epic meltdown following the CrowdStrike outage. JetBlue and Southwest came right after.
Among U.S. airlines, American beat only Frontier and Spirit. When you’re behind JetBlue something went wrong with your operation. Something did. American will chalk it up to weather and that’s not unfair but they’ve been chalking problems up to weather quite a lot. If their hubs are more affected by weather during peak travel times when people are trying to get places in summer that’s worth knowing.
American’s completion factor was nowhere close to Southwest’s or Alaska’s, and it was behind Spirit’s, but they didn’t cancel flights nearly as often in July as Delta or United. That’s CrowdStrike.
At the start of summer I wrote that if passengers are getting delayed, cancelled, and diverted – and if their bags are lost, or they’re turned away from flying completely despite having a ticket – Department of Transportation reports shows that it’s probably happening on American Airlines.
For an airline whose CEO’s sole focus has been operational reliability, they haven’t been that reliable. And the tradeoff of this for focus on the details of customer experience hurts. It’s no secret how to fix this airline and it comes down to leadership – sweating the details, and executing on more than just the table stakes of getting customers to their destination on schedule.
American has talked up the quality of their operation, but hasn’t been able to tell me what’s different that makes their operation better than it used to be. I tend to think that when they’ve performed well it’s been luck, so when they perform poorly that’s bad luck too. They are expecting not to make any money in the third quarter, encompassing late summer. That tells me winter is an open question at best.
They need to perform well, but that’s table stakes. With new higher labor costs for flight attendants coming (when the tentative agreement gets ratified) they need higher revenue, too. They need to sell their product for more than they do today. And that means a focus on more than just basic, reliable transportation. That means delivering on a better customer experience.
Interesting title, Gary: “Delta Melted Down To Historic Proportions – But American Airlines Last Month Was Actually Worse”. Candidly, as a passenger, my rating on performance would solely be Completion Factor. Sure, flights can and will be “late” due to all sorts of things, but that’s trumped by flights that are canceled outright (or otherwise not completed) as that’s vastly worse. As you say, on that metric American was better than both United and Delta. Maybe the title should read: “Delta Melted Down To Historic Proportions, was virtually Dead Last among ALL Airlines (excepting Westjet)”
thank you for providing this data which I have been saying for weeks.
First, United’s operation took a pretty good sized hit = not as large as DL’s but still a hit that only added to their Texas weather and MAX 9 related cancellations earlier this year – the latter of which DL did not have.
AA got its system back up faster after CrowdStrike but they haven’t run near as reliably for about a year; yes, they had a brief spell where their operation was running well but that has ended.
The weak point in AA’s operation is CLT which is overscheduled and incapable of dealing w/ delays either at CLT or anywhere in the NE which results in a lack of gates and airport capacity at CLT.
the numbers you posted show that the CrowdStrike meltdown won’t move the national rankings for a year. How airlines operate on a daily basis is what moves the needle on operational reliability metrics.
Because Delta canceled 5500 flight.
Tell the whole story you loser.
Never trust this guy Gary Leff
I bounce between DL and AA. Got high loyalty status with both. Not happy with either of them, this summer. DL’s CrowdStrike blame game, one week, AA’s Storm Debby cancellations the next week. Next week’s flight is on AA, and the week after that maybe AA, but maybe DL? I am at wit’s end. How did summer travel season get this risky. I can’t get from point A to point B on either of these airlines. Sad summer.
@ Gary — Where’s the ranking for most nights spent sleeping on the floor in ATL airport?
Tim – you are comparing Apples & Oranges. On time arrivals would not factor in all of those cancelled DL flights.
A look at the completion factor does, and it is very apparent that DL was dead last in July.
LMAO because AA had 50,000 more flights then DL !!
When I look at the list all I see is a sad state of affairs for the U.S. flying public. Nothing to brag about for any of the legacy carriers.
Ah, let’s compare controllable caused IROPS (Crew scheduling software failure) vs uncontrollable (weather). We need to send you back to elementary school so you can learn what apples and oranges are
Mainline AA has gotten so bad that if I have to use them, I book on Envoy out of here to KORD and connect. (KSGF) It’s pretty bad when the regional carrier regularly outperforms the mainline.
first, the real operational winner of the big 4 in July was Southwest. AA still cancelled 2% of their flights, UA cxld 3.5% and DL just over 5%.
But people fixate on anecdotes including what happens in a single month when it is clear that the hit to DL wasn’t big enough to dethrone them from their #1 position in operational reliability for the year assuming they maintain their current level of operations which rebounded very quickly after the IT meltdown.
AA, UA and WN all had major impacts in Texas from weather while AS and UA had MAX cancellations.
There simply is no “controllable vs. uncontrollable” delays from a DOT reporting perspective. In fact, weather IS controllable because it rarely happens outside of a forecast.
AA simply runs a much poorer operation on a day in and day out basis and it is heavily tied to their CLT hub which is being pushed well below its operational capability esp. when IROPS happen anywhere along the east coast.
Considering AA at CLT is the only real viable competitor hub to DL at ATL, AA’s inability to operate efficiently at CLT ensures that DL’s revenue dominance of the SE is unchallenged.
Don’t listen to Gary, clearly an American stock short. Every other day he works so hard to find totally fake and imagined rationale to bash American Airlines. Please remove this guy from your site, he is a stock manipulator.
And when things do go south, AA is the most likely to feed you to the wolves. I had an absolutely awful experience with AA last month. My flight was canceled spontaneously and without reason the night before travel, and despite the fact that three different phone agents said I was on standby for another flight out of JFK, the check in agent very early the next morning turned me away as I was re-ticketed out of a different airport. It’s a miracle I made it to my destination on time. The employees are not at all empowered to resolve customers’ problems, and are clearly kept in the dark about the airline’s policies. I have never experienced an airline so unprofessional and disorganized. Avoid at all costs!
Nothing will change at AA until the Board, or Shareholders, grow a pair and do something about it.
I would argue that AA in/out of PHL is (percentage-wise) as much of a coin-flip as CLT. Much lower volume of flights, but the odds of departing or arriving on time at PHL is (at best) a coin flip.
Once again, Delta proves that it offers a premium experience for its discerning and thoughtful guests.
Did you bring in Tim Dunn as a guest writer Gary? Cause this is ridiculous. Weather delays are not the same as mass cancelations
the only separation between IT related cancellations and “ordinary” weather cancellations is in the minds of those people that want to argue that their company or behavior is acceptable but someone else’s is not.
Weather is VERY PREDICTABLE. IT meltdowns and the MAX grounding were not.
And, as much as you want to throw DL under the bus, real data shows that UA cancelled 3.5% of its flights in July compared to 5.2% for DL. The notion that the CrowdStrike failure only impacted DL is a figment of someone’s imagination.
And the whole reason why AA recovered so quickly is because its IT is much less advanced than DL and UA’s.
DL operates its own res system and many were associated apps compared to other carriers including UA.
WN managed to avoid the mess because they are still 2 generations of technology behind DL and UA.
Other sites including Cranky Flier have documented for months that AA’s operations have fallen apart over the past year after a very short run at better performance.
AA clearly decided that it was too costly to run a decent operation and so they returned to the same poor operation they ran for years; given that DL and UA have a much higher percentage of repeat, business customers, they clearly do a better job of running as good of an operation as they can but neither is exempt from outside forces
Trying to hide behind AA’s failures by point to other airlines when everyone knows the truth is hypocrisy and deflection at its finest.
Only occassional mon-business flyer. I am avoiding AA if I can. Single gate agents, plus growing list of things gate agents can’t do, plus computers canceling connecting reservations for ANTICIPATED lateness even if you make the gate on time, and refusing to compensate that as “involuntary denied boarding” is enough for me. Flying these days involves enough anxiety w/o adding all that in.
Jeezuz Tim will you ever just STFU? No one believes you and you make. a complete ass of yourself every time you post. Did your mother teach you nothing? Any of your teachers or superiors?
Delta sucks. Just as bad if not more so than any other airline in the world. Admit it.
I am simply reinforcing what Gary wrote and I said long before he wrote this article which is that AA’s operation has been far less reliable than DL or UA.
AA, WN and UA all had significant weather impacts to their operations in Texas in May.
AS and UA had to deal w/ the MAX9 grounding.
DL had its IT meltdown which was worse than other airlines but UA still cancelled 3.5% of its July flights compared to DL’s 5.2%.
I see the data on a daily basis.
If you could simply accept that some of us really do know what is going on and don’t accept weak excuses about weather – which is very predictable – as justifying AA’s operation while truly unforeseen issues like the MAX 9 accident and grounding or CrowdStrike’s complete failure to perform quality control have impacted other airlines.
The NE is an operational mess and will be all week in all likelihood. 30% of AA mainline flights are delayed at this hour for today compared to 17% for UA, 14% for DL, but 40% for B6 and 32% for NK and 26% for WN.
It isn’t the massive operational meltdowns that define how well airlines perform on a month to month or year in-year out basis but how well they do with all of the “routine” predictable disruptions like weather.
AA simply runs a less reliable operation from all of the “usual” problems than any of the other big 4 airlines. and that is a big part of why their base of high value customers continues to shrink.
I’ve taken 8 american flights in the last month and not a single one has been on time. The delays aren’t small either. We’re talking 2 hours or more.
LOL.. this is hilarious seeing the Timmy Dunny Robot machine spewing nonsense to defend DL’s abysmal operations this month. And the poor robot must be getting so confused trying to defend all the random legal battles its parent company is embarking on. It is so fascinating to see what flawed logic will be cooked up in its screwed up brain soon.
KS,
we get that you rabidly are trying to find fault with DL here but the issue is UA’s delay.
Even though some people are fixated on UA’s technology which really just provides a whole lot more information than other airlines, this string of delay messages proves that a bunch of information telling you that the flight is repeatedly delayed for issues which UA should have resolved is indicative of an airline that does not have control of its operation; simply pushing a bunch of delay messages with a cascading bunch of reasons only confirms that.
UA simply should have been able to know the minute the plane left the west coast – and perhaps when it left the east coast the night before – the ramifications of those late departures and put in place what was necessary to get the flight back on track.
Mechanicals are not always predictable but UA does not have an IAD 787 pilot base so they failed to come up w/ a viable plan THE FIRST TIME to get the flight moving even when they made the decision to do an equipment swap.
I love it when Gary or anyone brings real data to the table – and it shows that UA’s cancellation rate at 3.5% for July was not that much better than DL’s at 5.2% even though we have repeatedly been told how much better every other airline did than DL.
AA and UA simply run less reliable operations than DL on a day in and day out basis with AA far worse.
Everyone has touted how great UA’s EWR hub is – its highest revenue hub – and yet it is the operational Achilles Heel with ATC delays rampant. This year, Scott Kirby is smart enough to not lash out at Mayor Pete for the FAA’s incompetence (which is real) but it simply means that UA is losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue compared to its plan because it put too much of its revenue expectations into NYC airspace.
A few things. First AA Management seems more fixated on being an upscale version of Frontier. Second, too many flights have been jammed into DFW and much more problematic CLT. Waiting in an overcrowded terminal with no seating, on even an overcrowded, dirty Admirals Club makes delays far worse. Third, the lack of communication from gate agents, a hallmark of AA, adds fuel to the fire. What happened to DL can happen to any airline. When you get 90% load factors re-accommodating displayed passengers in a timely manner becomes difficult. Too many butts looking at too few seats.
When it takes 2-3 hours to get a hold of someone in AA scheduling, do they ever know where their crews are? I see completion fact is a big deal, until they run a flight 24 hours late to complete it.
Tim, I just messaged the UAL 787 pilot I know who’s based at IAD and asked him if you were accurate in saying that UAL doesn’t have a 787 pilot base there. He confirmed he still has a job and there is a base there. So I think you need to check your facts… as usual.
Anyway I don’t think this is an argument about small % differences in OTP or completion rates. Delta charges more for tickets than any other airline in the U.S., so they are expected to have better operations, they are expected to communicate with customers and they are expected to quickly try to resolve issues caused by their incompetence… all of which they failed to do this month.
What’s worse is they have always gloated that their technology is much better than everyone else’s and then they failed to live up to that claim. I have never seen AAL or UAL state that their technology is so good that it’s only weather that will melt them down… but hey Delta did!
Gary you need to write an article about this garbage:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/deltas-top-dei-officer-jettisons-ladies-gentleman-gate-announcements-part-equity-push
Adam,
Gary is smart enough to be able to read the article you linked which specifically refers to 2021 and policies by many companies that were unwound in the wake of the Supreme Court decision regarding college affirmation action.
Many companies have sadly ditched “ladies and gentlemen” and it might be inclusive to say “have you” but it reflects that western society has little respect for others any more – and the trend to removing ladies and gentlemen, like many things, started in Europe.
Andy,
I am happy to admit that UA does have a 787 pilot base at IAD but that actually makes the situation worse. The minute they knew they needed a new airplane and the crew would have timed out, they should have been able to say with a fairly high degree of certainty as to when the rescheduled flight would operate because pilot contracts require reserve pilots to get on duty in a defined period of time. As hard as it is for you to accept, UA’s endless series of delay messages with every reason under the sun simply proves that they couldn’t get a delayed flight out a time which they should have been able to see with certainty at least twice.
As for your continued obsession with Delta’s IT delay, Gary’s own data shows that UA cxld 3.5% of flights – the second worst in the US – compared to DL’s 5.2%. You simply cannot logically talk about how bad DL’s operation was and then excuse UA’s performance which was only 1/3 better.
If cancellations were the metric then AA and WN were the winners but both had horrific on-time percentages for airlines that didn’t meltdown which means that not one of the big 4 operated reliably enough for a passenger making a connection to have a reasonable degree of certainty they would make their original scheduled flights even close to on-time.
As for the reasons for DL’s IT meltdown, I am actually quite glad that the case is headed to trial because all of the uninformed talking heads including Gary will be proven wrong.
– Just about everyone said that DL’s IT failure was caused by a lack of investment in IT and yet DL came back and said it has invested billions in IT. Anyone that has followed this industry for any length of time knows that DL has heavily moved to cloud computing since its 2017 IT meltdown which was caused by power problems in ATL. It isn’t hard to prove whether a company has spent on average or even above its peers on IT and it will be seen that all of those people including Microsoft and CrowdStrike’s CEOs that made that claim will badly hurt their credibility – which will hurt them in the eyes of the legal system.
– Multiple sources have tried to compare the time it took DL to get back on its feet compared to other airlines and I repeatedly said that all US airlines don’t come close to using the same IT systems. Microsoft’s CEO listed a whole list of other IT providers and platforms that DL uses and DL came back saying that 60% of their systems run on Microsoft’s Operating Systems and CrowdStrike which might be one of the highest percentages among large US companies. If the message that relying that much on CRWD and MSFT is too high, then the implications for CRWD and MSFT sales is astonishing. The fact that MSFT’s CEO didn’t know that DL was running 60% of its systems on MSFT – by far its largest IT provider – is beyond damning for MSFT.
– Multiple people were quick to trash Delta for not talking to MSFT and CRWD’s CEOs in the hours during the recovery and yet DL now says that neither company was providing the IT support that DL needed other than what DL was already doing. CRWD didn’t even provide an automated way to restart all of the 40,000 offline Delta servers until Delta’s recovery was well underway – and even then Delta says CRWD’s solution did not work right the first time. No company is interested in talking to executives when what they most need is technical assistance and there is no evidence that CRWD or MSFT was giving DL anything they didn’t already know.
Manually Restarting 40K serves that worked perfectly fine the minute before CRWD released its fatally flawed code took an enormous amount of time and the reason why DL took longer is because it had a more advanced cloud-computing network than its competitors which was more dependent on CRWD and MSFT.
The longer DL keeps the discussion about CRWD and MSFT’s failures, the more it hurts the two IT companies. DL is simply trying to recoup some if not all of the money it lost as well as establish that its meltdown was due to two other companies and not the litany of reasons that CRWD and MSFT’s CEOs and a whole lot of pundits have stated even though they have repeatedly been proven to be false.
Delta is back running an operation far better than AA, UA or WN and the IT meltdown still did not put DL in last place for operational reliability for the month of July as Gary accurately noted.
It’s true that journalism has faced significant challenges in recent times. The rise of misinformation, sensationalism, and biased reporting has led to skepticism among readers. However, there are still reputable news sources that strive for accuracy and integrity. However, Gary is not one of these. His biases is shown in almost at every post. But knowing this, I often laugh and shake my head anyway.
@Tim Dunn
“Weather is VERY PREDICTABLE. IT meltdowns and the MAX grounding were not.”
What? Bwahahahahaha. Obviously you have no actual job in IT beyond your fingers touching a keyboard and paying for the internet.
IT meltdowns are quite predictable if you don’t test releases before sending them to production. Delta clearly did not. They are even more predictable if you actually load test your software. But DL didn’t want to spend money there.
The problem with Delta Leadership doing what you are doing here, is taking Delta fans like me, and just encouraging them spend their money differently. Because they won’t learn from their mistakes.