When I called Travel Weekly's
contracted travel agency recently to book a flight from Washington
to New York, the best choice by time of schedule seemed to be
JetBlue, which actually was the airline I preferred to fly.
But before I booked the
flight, I used FlightStats.com to look up the on-time performance of
that particular flight. It was awful, and that was particularly
worrisome because I was connecting to an international flight in
New York.
So I had the agent book
me on a different flight on a different carrier. It was not quite
ideal in scheduled departure time but it was more
reliable.
There may not be many
customers factoring in on-time performance when buying airline
tickets. Truth be told, I don't always remember to check each
flight's on-time performance. But I think customers should have
easy access to more information.
Here's how and
why.
When U.S. airlines get
criticized for contributing to delay problems by increasing their
flights to a congested airport during its peak hours, often using
smaller regional jets, their response is invariably the same: We're
just giving the customers what they want.
Leaving aside the
question of whether airlines always give customers what they want
(free food and more leg room, anyone?) perhaps it is time for the
airlines to prove that customers really want these more frequent
flights no matter the consequences.
If airlines don't want
their schedules limited by "re-regulation" (an overused bugaboo
because every industry in the U.S. is regulated to some extent),
how about more information instead? Let every customer know up
front, before booking a flight, how often that flight was late the
previous month.
I'm not talking about
providing the information if the customer asks for it, which
airline reservation agents already are required to do. (I doubt
most customers even know this information is available, and it's
not even an option on most airline Web sites.)
I'm talking about
telling them automatically as part of the booking
process.
Then let's see if those
customers are willing to book a flight to get an ideal departure
time if they know that flight only arrives within 15 minutes of
schedule 40% of the time or within 30 minutes of schedule 60% of
the time -- or if its has a median delay of 40 minutes (which means
half of its delays are longer than 40 minutes).
The industry and the
government seem to be moving in that direction. The Coalition for
an Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights and the Aviation Consumer
Action Project are lobbying for proactive disclosure. The
Transportation Department is considering a proactive disclosure
requirement for airline Web sites and online agencies in its
package of proposals for new airline passenger protections. And the
Air Transport Association recently recommended to its members,
which includes all of the major carriers, that they put on-time
flight information on their Web sites.
US Airways now shows
the on-time performance for most of its flights, and Delta has said
it will do so soon.
But what level of
detail should be voluntarily provided or required?
The ATA is still
talking to carriers about that, but the passenger rights groups
want the government to require airlines to tell customers when they
are considering a flight that is delayed more than 40% of the time
or canceled more than 5% of the time.
The DOT is even more
ambitious. Under its proposal, airline Web sites and online
agencies would have to let customers know the percentage of each
flight's arrivals that were more than 15 minutes late (the DOT's
measure for whether a flight is considered late), the percentage
that arrived more than 30 minutes late and the percentage of
flights that were canceled.
Airline Web sites and
online agencies also would have to provide "special highlighting"
if the flight was late more than 50% of the time.
The proposal, as
currently formulated, would not require airline reservation agents
to proactively provide a flight's on-time performance, but the DOT
did invite comments on whether it should.
More information isn't
necessarily better, because information overload can be a problem.
But more information from as many booking sources as possible is
better, as in providing the type of information the DOT is
suggesting, or even a median delay time (not averages, as one
really late flight can unfairly skew the average).
The Coalition for an
Airline Passengers' Bill of Rights and the Aviation Consumer Action
Project, in making their proposal, said a proactive reporting
regulation for on-time performance "could dramatically reduce
demand for the most congested times through market forces, as most
passengers will not book travel on such flights."
I'm not entirely
convinced this is true. Customers might be willing to take their
chances if they like a particular airline or if the flight is at a
time and price they prefer. I even doubt it would always be a
deciding factor for me. But for consumers to have the power to make
reasonable choices, sometimes they need more data to make an
informed decision.
This isn't
"re-regulation" in the onerous sense airlines use the term; it's
giving consumers the information they need to make informed
choices, like providing nutritional information on food packages.
It's using the power of the market.
And if airlines are
convinced this is what customers really want -- a broader choice of
flight times, even if some of those times are unrealistic -- they
should be happy to prove it.