April 13--Airlines were able to stick to their schedules 83.6 percent of the time in February, with Southwest Airlines posting one of the best on-time arrival rates at 87.8 percent.
Southwest was beat only by Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines, according to air travel results released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines were the tardiest, arriving on-time 68.9 percent and 63.2 percent of the time, respectively.
Chicago-based United Airlines was near the middle of the pack, with an on-time arrival rate of 86.2 percent.
JetBlue was the only airline with "chronically delayed" flights, the report said.
At the end of February, JetBlue had three flights that were at least 30 minutes late more than half of the time for two straight months. None involved a Chicago airport.
The dozen carriers that reported their results to the department canceled 1.6 percent of their domestic flights overall in February.
United again was in the middle tier, having canceled 0.9 percent of its flights.
Spirit and JetBlue had among the highest cancellation rates, at 3.9 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively.
Airlines with the lowest cancellation rates were Alaska, Delta Airlines and Hawaiian.
byerak@tribpub.com
