For those who have braved flying during the Covid-19 pandemic, the crisis has offered ultraclean aircraft, uncrowded flights and comparatively easy experiences at half-empty airports.
The pandemic has also led to another improvement in the air travel experience that isn't as immediately obvious: more timely flights.
According to recently released figures from the DOT, 90.5% of domestic flights operated or marketed by the 10 primary mainline U.S. carriers were on time in July. That was way up from July 2019, when just 76.9% of flights were on time.
Airlines recorded an even higher on-time performance in June, of 92.4%, up from 73.3% a year earlier. The department defines on-time flights as those arriving within 15 minutes of their schedule.
The DOT hasn't yet released on-time statistics for months beyond July, but airlines indicate the trend has continued. Southwest, which led all the mainline carriers with an on-time performance of 94.5% in July, reported during its October earnings call that its total on-time performance for the third quarter was 94.4%.
Daniel Shurz, senior vice president of commercial operations for Frontier, wasn't as specific, but he also boasted about Frontier's improved operating performance during the International Aviation Forecast Summit in Cincinnati last month.
"It is amazing how much faster the air traffic system works with fewer flights out there," he said.
But reduced traffic in the skies is just one reason that airlines have seen on-time performance soar during the pandemic. Half-empty aircraft, which take less time to board, deplane and load with baggage, have been another major factor. So has the greater ease airlines have in navigating less-crowded airfields.
"A combination of reduced load factors, the decreased time needed to board and deplane less customers and generally reduced congestion and delays across the industry's network have supported the Southwest team's focus on operating safely and reliably each day," Southwest spokesman Brian Parrish said of the carrier's improved operating performance.
Indeed, Southwest reported a load factor in the third quarter of just 44.9%, down from 83.5% a year earlier. The carrier also capped loads during the quarter at approximately two-thirds in order to block middle seats.
Airline industry analyst Bob Mann of R.W. Mann & Co. said that a reason airlines have improved on-time performance so much during the pandemic is that congestion is not linear. As air space and airfields reach 75% to 80% of their capacity, system delays ramp up exponentially.
Clogged ramps, backups in the skies immediately around airports and crowding on particular popular pathways in the high-altitude sector of a flight all cause problems.
"In the worst case, they combine with each other," Mann said.
But the normally crowded U.S. air system has gotten a major breather during the pandemic. In September, the domestic capacity of U.S. airlines was still down approximately 50% year over year, according to IATA, with much steeper cuts in international flying.
Mann said that pre-Covid, early morning flight delays emanating out of the especially constrained Northeast travel corridors of New York and Boston often led to a cascade of delays. An aircraft arriving late from that first flight of the day would depart late for its next flight and so on.
But these days, Mann said, the 10% of flights that are late are caused by problems internal to the airlines rather than by the broader air travel system.
Still, airfields aren't always as lightly used right now as some might assume, said Dave Cunningham, director of operations for Denver Airport, the busiest in the U.S. through portions of the pandemic.
During peak times, Cunningham said, Denver's airfield is as crowded as ever. But the lulls between peak periods are quieter. He estimated that during peak times, aircraft departing out of Denver take 10 to 12 minutes to taxi to the runway, compared with five to six minutes during lull periods.
Lull periods are also more frequent now, Cunningham said, largely because United, Denver's largest carrier, has reduced the number of connecting banks it is offering each day. Hub-and-spoke carriers like United schedule flights to and from their hubs in a series of surges, called banks, in order to optimize connections for the largest number of passengers.
United spokesman Luke Punzenberger said the carrier is now operating six banks each day at Denver, as opposed to nine pre-Covid. Still, as airlines operate in what overall is a much less constrained environment, Mann said they should be drawing lessons for the future.
"They should be using the pause to develop a more efficient operation as they ramp back up again," he said. "Because they have these higher debt loads, they are going to have to be more financially efficient."