# Airline OTP: The Full Story



## The Davy Crockett (Jul 4, 2014)

Who knew? :unsure:

I found something in USAToday that I thought was pretty good!  

Here is a link to the article "Airline on-time rankings don't tell the full story"

From the article:



> Despite current efforts to undo government protections for airline passengers, the U.S. Department of Transportation deserves kudos for strengthening such rules. In May, the DOT proposed a new set of passenger protections and is collecting public comments on these proposals.
> 
> One key initiative involves the DOT's monthly Air Travel Consumer Report, which ranks U.S. carriers in several categories, including delayed flights and consumer complaints. I've praised these rankings for years; in 2005, I argued that the monthly report is "the best place to get the lowdown on how airlines treat their customers." But although I noted the DOT had expanded the rankings to include smaller and regional airlines, I didn't foresee the long-term effects then.
> 
> Eventually I concluded there's a fatal flaw in how airline rankings for flight delays, mishandled baggage and oversold flights are compiled. The good news, thankfully, is something can be done now to change it.


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## jis (Jul 4, 2014)

Even that may not be the full story, though probably close to it for domestic flights. But consider this, the United flight that I took from Newark to Orlando was also code shared with - get this - 4 or 5 Star Alliance partners. I.e. it carried passengers whose tickets were actually issues under their own flight numbers by United and four or five other airlines, like Air Canada, Lufthansa, SAS, Copa, etc. Trying to assign OTP data and other stuff based on this is almost like trying to assign costs by allocation to individual trains as practiced by Amtrak, and works out to be almost as silly sometimes.

Also as far as baggage handling goes, many airlines do not maintain in house passenger service operations other than a few checking agents, and sometimes even not that at out stations that are served even by main line. Those are contracted out. It is another challenge figuring out who is responsible exactly for what on a station by station basis.

The rules need to be changed to say that whoever issued the ticket remains the first point of contact for resolving all issues related to that ticket. Who they have to deal with in order to do so should be their problem, not the passenger's.


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## Anderson (Jul 4, 2014)

Honestly, OTP measurements and so forth should come down to a sort of "command responsibility": If Chautauqua is using a United slot at an airport and is basically being contracted for the use of their plane (and _maybe_ their on-board crew), it's a United flight. If, on the other hand, United is piggybacking on Chautauqua's slots and so forth, then it's a Chautauqua flight.

A breakout by codeshare would probably be most useful, but...well, the airlines will fight that, won't they?


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## jis (Jul 5, 2014)

The airlines will simply say that they already inform the passengers which airline is providing each segment of the itinerary. That indeed is something that is not kept a secret and is prominently mentioned in the itinerary. Gate slots are cross leased among airlines all the time, so using those for determining anything is a non starter IMHO.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## PRR 60 (Jul 5, 2014)

There are private web sites such as FlightStats that are devoted to posting flight on-time ratings, and those show all codeshare relationships. I think the writer is making an issue out of a non-issue, but it is USA Today, so I don't think the article is aimed at experienced travelers. The fact is that someone can drill back into official DOT data and find out the performance statistics of any flight from January 1995 onward. For a statistic nut like me, the data available for flight performance is amazing.

Correcting a mistake in the article, Southwest, AirTran, American and US Airways continue to report data as individual carriers.


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## railiner (Jul 6, 2014)

PRR 60 said:


> There are private web sites such as FlightStats that are devoted to posting flight on-time ratings, and those show all codeshare relationships. I think the writer is making an issue out of a non-issue, but it is USA Today, so I don't think the article is aimed at experienced travelers. The fact is that someone can drill back into official DOT data and find out the performance statistics of any flight from January 1995 onward. For a statistic nut like me, the data available for flight performance is amazing.
> 
> Correcting a mistake in the article, Southwest, AirTran, American and US Airways continue to report data as individual carriers.


That should end when the merged carrier's finally get a new single operating certificate from the FAA


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