PHOTO: Hawaiian Airlines came out on top in the DOT report, with 87.3 percent on-time arrival rates. (Photo courtesy of Hawaiian Airlines)
Complaints filed by airline consumers in March 2015 were up more than 55 percent from the same month last year and up more than 27 percent from the previous month, February 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report.
As a result of the increase, the number of complaints received by the DOT's Aviation Consumer Protection Division through the first quarter of 2015 signals a 14.4 percent increase over the same quarter in 2014.
Despite the high number of complaints, though, overall on-time performance by the reporting airlines was improved in March 2015, with carriers posting an on-time arrival rate of 78.7 percent, up from 77.6 percent in March 2014 and 72.8 percent in February 2015.
However, the consumer report reveals that the overall cancellation rate rose slightly.
The reporting airlines canceled 2.2 percent of their scheduled domestic flights this past March, a rise from the 1.9 percent cancellation rate reported in March 2014.
Nonetheless, the rate marked an improvement from the previous month, in which a whopping 4.8 percent of domestic flights were scrapped.
In terms of on-time arrival rates, Hawaiian Airlines, Alaska Airlines and Delta Air Lines stood out from the pack of reporting carriers, leading the way at 87.3 percent, 85.6 percent and 84 percent respectively.
The three airlines finished in the same order in terms of lowest rate of canceled flights as well, with each recording a rate of under one percent.
Meanwhile, Frontier Airlines, Envoy Air and JetBlue Airways were on the wrong end of on-time performance, with each carrier's flights arriving on time fewer than three times out of four.
Envoy Air also reported the highest cancellation rate for March 2015 at 7.2 percent. ExpressJet Airlines (3.9 percent) and American Airlines (3.1 percent) recorded the second- and third-highest rate of canceled flights respectively.
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