More than half of Air Canada’s flights arrived in late July. This is the worst result among the 10 largest airlines in North America.
This was reported by the aeronautical data company Cirium in its monthly report published on Thursday. Last month, 51% of the company’s flights arrived within 15 minutes of the scheduled time, the Globe and Mail reports.
However, Air Canada claims to have improved compared to last year.
“In terms of personnel, we are above the level before the 2019 pandemic, but we are flying 90% of the seat miles that we flew then. In addition, we have taken other measures, such as adjusting our timetable to smooth out traffic peaks and thus facilitate the flow of passengers. We have also added additional last-minute flights to the schedule where possible to carry passengers affected by the disruption,” said company spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick.
Meanwhile, airline WestJet climbed to seventh place, according to the report, while American carriers Alaska Airlines and Delta Airlines were on-time with 82% and 79% of flights, respectively.
If Canadian airlines are at the bottom of the rankings, it’s largely because of the pandemic, which has forced their operations to close for longer than anywhere else in the world, according to Barry Prentice, a transportation professor at the University of Manitoba.
Due to the long downtime, flights have resumed with new staff with no experience in specific positions.
Adverse weather conditions also contributed to the poor performance of Canadian airlines.
“What contributed the most? [aux retards, c’est] Weather impacts from the ongoing thunderstorms we’ve seen in western Canada and third-party delays at service partners across the aviation ecosystem,” said Denise Kenny, spokeswoman at WestJet.
In fact, planes were the least on-time punctual in North America, where only 66% of flights landed on time.
At the global level, this figure rises to 82%, with 74% in Europe, 76% in Asia-Pacific and 81% in Latin America.
It should be noted that staff shortages in both Canada and the United States have contributed to North America’s underperforming relative to other continents.