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Delta Ahead of Other Major US Carriers per March OAG Report

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Atlanta, GA-based Delta Air Lines (DAL - Free Report) emerged as the most punctual among the leading U.S. carriers according to a report released by the UK-based provider of digital flight information — OAG. Per the report, 82.3% of its flights arrived on time.

Delta was followed by the Dallas-based Southwest Airlines (LUV - Free Report) among the four major US carriers (Delta, Southwest, American Airlines Group (AAL - Free Report) and United Continental Holdings (UAL - Free Report) .

Notably, the following a spate of mergers, over 80% of aviation market in the U.S. is governed by the above four carriers. All the above-mentioned carriers carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

According to the OAG report, Southwest Airlines saw 79.6% of its flights arriving on time in March, followed by American Airlines and United Continental Holdings, with 78.1% and 77.9% of their flights arriving on time, respectively.

Although, Delta emerged as the leader of the pack, as far as the leading U.S. carriers are concerned, Hawaiian Airlines, the wholly owned subsidiary of Hawaiian Holdings (HA - Free Report) , was the most punctual one among the publicly traded U.S. carriers, as per the OAG report. Also, the Honolulu, HI-based carrier saw 83.3% of its flights landing on time in the month of March. On the contrary, low-cost U.S. carriers like JetBlue Airways Corp. (JBLU - Free Report) and Spirit Airlines (SAVE - Free Report) performed disappointingly in the month with 72.4% and 75.5% of their flights arriving on time. respectively.

In fact, Delta had emerged as the most punctual carrier among the top four U.S. carriers in February with 86% of flights on time. However, American Airlines had finished a notch higher than its current third position with 84.3% of its flights arriving on time in the same month.

Cancellations

Hawaiian Airlines saw the fewest number of cancellations among the listed U.S. carriers during March, with only 0.6% of 8,030 flights being called off. Delta boasted of the lowest cancellation percentage among the four major U.S. carriers in March.

According to the report, the percentage of cancelled flights for Delta, Southwest, American Airlines and United Continental stood at 1.5,1.8, 2.5 and 3 respectively. In March, JetBlue Airways fared most disappointingly among the listed U.S. carriers with respect to this metric with 3.5% of its flights being cancelled.

Delta’s Solid Performance Gives Some Relief

Delta’s performance is certainly encouraging both with respect to on-time performance as well as flight cancellations. Also, the encouraging report provides some much-needed breathing space for the carrier as it has been struggling with multiple headwinds of late. While disclosing its March traffic numbers, the carrier trimmed its forecast for the first quarter passenger unit revenues. In fact, this was the second successive month in which the airline had slashed its first quarter passenger unit revenue view.

The struggles of the carrier are exemplified by the fact that it has significantly underperformed the Zacks categorized Transportation- Airline industry over the last three months. During the period, the industry gained 3.1% compared with the company’s loss of 9.3%.


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