Bumped Airline Passengers Falls to Lowest Rate Ever

Here’s a statistic that may be a little hard to believe after a year when United Airlines made headlines far and wide for dragging a passenger off of a plane.

Airlines bumped passengers off of flights at the lowest rate on record last year, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

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In the Air Travel Consumer Report that was just released, airlines posted a bumping rate of 0.34 per 10,000 passengers in 2017, the lowest annual rate based on historical data since 1995. The previous low was 0.62 in 2016.

Though the new figures don’t include passengers who accepted travel vouchers or other offers to give up seats on overbooked flights, according to Associated Press, airlines reduced their bump rates with such offers.

Airlines have also improved their game when it comes to mishandled baggage. In 2017, U.S. carriers reported mishandled baggage at a rate of 2.46 per 1,000 passengers. That’s an improvement over the 2016 rate of 2.70.

The new report also includes information about on-time performances, cancellations, tarmac delays, chronically delayed flights and the causes of flight delays filed with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS). On-time performance continues to be a mixed bag, which will likely come as no surprise to travelers.

READ MORE: Delta Tops World Rankings For On-Time Performance

In December 2017, the carriers posted an on-time arrival rate of 80.3 percent, which represents an improvement from the 75.6 percent rate for December 2016. However, the latest figure is a drop from the 88.3 percent on-time rate for November 2017. For the full year of 2017, the on-time rate was 80.2 percent, a decline from 81.4 percent for 2016.

December 2017 was also a challenging month for planes stuck on the tarmac. Airlines reported 96 tarmac delays of more than three hours on domestic flights, compared to no such tarmac delays reported in November 2017.

Of those 96 domestic flights with tarmac times of more than three hours, 77 were arriving flights waiting on Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson tarmac during the December 17 power outage. An additional 14 flights were delayed on the tarmac departing Atlanta during a December 8 snowstorm.

Those who travel with pets may be heartened to hear the airlines improved somewhat in this department. In 2017, there were 24 animal deaths, 15 animal injuries, and one lost animal. That’s a total of 40 incidents, compared to 48 incidents for 2016.

One last item that will be useful for travelers everywhere: the three airlines with the highest on-time arrival rate.

According to the report, United Airlines (84.6 percent on-time arrivals); Delta Air Lines (83.5 percent on-time arrivals) and Alaska Airlines (83.4 percent on-time arrivals) are the three airlines that came out on top.

At the bottom of the heap, is Jet Blue Airways, Frontier Airlines, and ExpressJet Airlines, with on-time arrival rates of 74.1 percent; 75.8 percent and 76.4 percent respectively.