April U.S. flight operations for the 10 reporting carriers were up 3.4 percent year over year to nearly 567,900 but were down 3.6 percent from March 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation Air Travel Consumer Report, released Thursday.
Despite the month-over-month operational decline, April cancellations increased to 1.7 percent of scheduled flights versus 1.3 percent in March. The rate, however, was lower than the 2.3 percent canceled in April 2022.
The reporting carriers with the lowest rates of canceled flights for April include Alaska Airlines (0.9 percent), Southwest Airlines (1.1 percent) and Allegiant Air (1.3 percent). Those with the highest rates of cancellations were Spirit Airlines (3.6 percent), JetBlue Airlines (2.9 percent) and United Airlines Network (2.3 percent). Networks include branded codeshare partners.
Carriers in April handled 40 million bags and reported a mishandled baggage rate of 0.55 percent, equal to the rate in April 2022 but lower than the March 2023 rate of 0.58 percent.
DOT for the fifth month in a row did not include complaint data in its report and did not provide a future date as to when the information would be available. The last complaint data DOT reported was for January 2023.
