Delta's Atlantic Southeast Airlines Is America's Worst Airline

The Department of Transportations Air Travel Consumer Report was released Monday and it confirms what we’ve all been thinking: Delta’s Atlantic Southeast Airlines is just stunningly terrible.

Tardiness Issues:

Atlantic Southeast is now dead last among the major carriers in on-time arrival percentage at 63.4%. That’s 10 percentage points worse than the next airline on the list, Alaska Airlines (73.3%), but still an improvement from earlier this summer when they were on-time only 54.2% of the time.

Of the major carriers, Atlantic Southeast had the most flights that were late 70% or more of the time. They had 24. The next carrier on the list only had 4. Continental, American Eagle, Mesa, JetBlue, Frontier and a few others had 0.

Atlantic Southeast tied Pinnacle for the airline that canceled the highest percentage of flights at 2.4% For example, Atlantic Southeast canceled 449 more flights than Northwest Airlines, which is twice as big, and loves to cancel flights.

Did Your Mother Give You A Note?:

So why are they so terrible? Do they have an excuse? Weather? Airport delays? Apparently not. According to the report, they lead all airlines in “Air Carrier Delays” with 18.84% of delays caused by… themselves. That’s 10 percentage points more than any other airline.

The DOT defines “Air Carrier Delay” as: “The cause of the cancellation or delay was due to circumstances within the airline’s control (e.g. maintenance or crew problems, etc.).” Among all airlines the rate of “Air Carrier Delay” is only 5.25%.

Watch Out For Falling Luggage:

So, can you trust them with your baggage? No. Aside from the fact that they recently had a cargo bay door open mid-air, raining luggage down on Chicagoland, they also lead all airlines with the most mishandled baggage claims per passenger in September. (10.54 reports per every 1,000 passengers.)

All This and Overbooking, Too:

Surely they’re not last in “overbooking,” too? Of course they are. Dead last. Atlantic Southeast denied boarding to 4.11 out of every 10,000 passengers from July-Sep of this year.

Driving Us To Drink:

Why are they so bad? Is it because their flight attendants show up drunk? Or are the flight attendants showing up drunk because Atlantic Southeast is so bad? It’s like the chicken and the egg, isn’t it?

Tell us, why is Atlantic Southeast so bad?

Air Travel Consumer Report [DOT]
(Photo:Drewski2112)

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