Hawaiian Finally Showing Improvement in Mainland On Time Performance

(MoneyWatch)  It sure took them awhile, but Hawaiian finally had a decent operating month for its mainland flights in April. On-time performance was respectable for the first time in a long time. Let's hope this actually is a trend and not just luck.

When I last wrote about this problem, Hawaiian had just posted a January on-time percentage of 52.8 percent for its mainland flights (excluding San Jose, Oakland, and Sacramento). February turned out to be slightly better, though still disappointing at 67.7 percent. But March took a turn for the worse and came in at 58 percent. So when I saw that April came in at 75.3 percent, I was shocked. It looks like they finally put together a decent month (though they still should be able to do better than that).

The most frustrating thing about their poor performance is the lack of acknowledgment. I mean, the first line in their boilerplate type on their press release says, "Hawaiian has led all U.S. carriers in on-time performance for each of the past five years (2004-2008) . . . ." Yeah, and that's thanks to a fantastic interisland operation. But the mainland flights have suffered mightily.

I've asked Hawaiian what was happening on their mainland flights before, but I never received a response. So I'll just be keeping a close eye on them over the next couple of months to see if they've actually fixed the problem or whether this was a fluke.