February Was the Cruelest Month for Air Travel

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Crews spray deicing solution onto an American Airlines 737 before departure at Dallas-Fort Worth International airport.

Image: Brandon Wade/Associated Press

By Jessica Plautz2014-04-11 14:56:39 UTC

If you had a flight canceled in February, you were not alone.

U.S. airlines canceled 23,719 flights (5.5%) that month. That was enough to make it the worst February for domestic air travel since the Department of Transportation started tracking cancelations in 1995.

Delays were also on the rise. Only 70.7% of U.S. flights in February arrived on time, according to the Department of Transportation.

Even so, airlines snatched one small victory from the jaws of defeat: no planes were stuck on the tarmac for more than three hours. Despite thousands of delays and cancellations, carriers managed to keep to the new federal guidelines for tarmac delays.

The best airlines for on-time arrivals were Hawaiian and Alaska; the two carriers have routes that generally avoid the areas of the country with the worst weather.

Airlines Ranked by % of On-Time Arrivals for February 2014

Hawaiian Airlines - 90.1%

Alaska Airlines - 85.7%

Delta Air Lines - 77.5%

Virgin America - 73.2%

Skywest Airlines - 71.1%

Southwest Airlines - 70.8%

United Airlines - 70.0%

American Eagle - 66.5%

JetBlue Airways - 64.6%

Frontier Airlines - 64.2%

ExpressJet Airlines - 59.0%

A flight is considered on time if it arrives within 15 minutes of the scheduled time, according to the Department of Transportation.

The report includes all airlines in the U.S. with at least 1% of the total domestic scheduled-service passenger revenues. Several small regional carrier are not included.

Read the full report here.

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Topics: air travel, Airlines, delays, travel, Travel & Leisure, U.S., US & World, Climate