OREANDA-NEWS. September 14, 2016. In the busiest month of the summer schedule, Delta ranked high in operational metrics among the 13 mainline and regional carriers tracked in the Department of Transportation’s Air Travel Consumer Report covering July, released Tuesday.

With a "completion factor" of 99.7 percent in the month—the measure of flights completed as scheduled—Delta took third place behind smaller Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, respectively.1 During the month, Delta notched 15 days without a single mainline, domestic cancellation, bringing the total through July 31 to 147 for the year, compared to 107 by the same point in 2015, according to the DOT.2

Delta’s on-time performance for July—clocking in at 81.6 percent—ranked fourth behind Alaska, Hawaiian and regional carrier SkyWest airlines. The DOT defines on-time as flights arriving within 14 minutes of the scheduled arrival time.1

The airline also took the fourth place spot in reports of mishandled bags with 2.11 reports per 1,000 customers, behind smaller carriers Virgin America, Alaska Airlines and JetBlue. Delta was ranked the highest among large network carriers American, United and Southwest. 

Delta and Delta Connection carried more customers in a single day on July 22 than ever in its history with more than 624,000 people taking to the skies on roughly 5,900 Delta flights around the world.

[1] Based on DOT Air Travel Consumer September 2016 Report statistics for July 2016 on-time arrival based on domestic flights flown and completion rate based on domestic flights scheduled, compared to all carriers reporting to the DOT.  

[2] Based on Air Traffic Consumer Reports from January 2015 through July 2016 completion rate based on mainline domestic flights scheduled.