The January flight cancellation rate for the 10 largest U.S. carriers increased for a second month in a row, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s latest Air Travel Consumer Report.
Reporting carriers in January canceled 3.8 percent of scheduled domestic flights, higher than both the rate of 0.4 percent from December 2023 and the 1.9 percent rate reported for January 2023.
The grounding of the Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft following a Jan. 5 door-plug incident on an Alaska Airlines flight appears to have affected both Alaska and United Airlines, the U.S. carriers that operate that aircraft model. The grounding order was in effect from Jan. 6 to Jan. 24. Alaska topped the list of carriers with the highest January cancellation rates at 11.9 percent, followed by United at 6.9 percent. In third was Southwest Airlines at 3.1 percent.
Carriers in December with the lowest cancellation rates included Hawaiian Airlines (1.5 percent), Spirit Airlines (1.5 percent) and JetBlue (1.7 percent).
U.S. carriers operated more than 560,350 flights in January, which represents a 0.44 percent year-over-year decline and 7.2 percent drop month over month. Again, Alaska and United ended up canceling several flights each day the Max 9 was grounded.
For January, carriers handled 37.4 million bags and reported a mishandled baggage rate of 0.75 percent, higher than both the rate of 0.50 percent in December 2023 and the rate of 0.73 percent in January 2023.
Data regarding airline service complaint was once again delayed. The new system for calculating this information initially was supposed to be operational by January 2024, according to DOT.
