Southwest's Chronic Flight Delays Are Getting Worrisome

(MoneyWatch)  Just two months ago, I wrote how Southwest Airline's spike in chronically-delayed flights in March was an anomaly and wasn't that big of a deal. After seeing May's results, I'm getting a little more concerned. Something is going on here.

I should note that overall, Southwest's on-time performance has been good. It just seems that there are some problem flights that can't get off the ground on time. It was March performance that caught my attention initially. That month, Southwest had 20 flights that were delayed more than 80 percent of the time. In addition, another 16 were delayed at least 70 percent of the time. At the time, Southwest spokesperson Christi Day commented on the airline's poor performance for a story here on BNET.

Southwest says, "It takes 8 to 10 operations to see the trend which would only leave us about 6 days to fix the problem." They fixed the problem quickly, but the damage for the month had already been done. For April, the airline will report "much improved" results.

And that was true. April saw only one flight delayed at least 80 percent of the time and a mere six more being late 70 percent of the time. Even though that was smaller, it was still nearly 40 percent of all flights that were chronically-delayed. It was certainly better, but it wasn't perfect.

But then May results came out and the numbers tanked again. In May, Southwest had 38 flights delayed more than 70 percent of the time. That was actually worse than the March numbers. What happened?

I asked Southwest spokesperson Chris Mainz, and he explained:

May was a challenging month for us due to high load factors and more weather and [air traffic control]-related issues.

Unfortunately, everyone had that problem in May but only chronic problem airline Comair exceeded Southwest's rate of chronic delays.

If you have single flights that are delayed more than 70 percent of the time, it would seem that it's an issue of scheduling. Southwest has been using a more aggressive scheduling system in recent times, and something tells me that they'll need to do some more tweaking here to make sure these numbers shrink.

With the Department of Transportation turning an eye on chronic delays, Southwest is going to have to fix this problem or risk getting further negative publicity in an area that's seeing an increasing focus. I'm sure Southwest doesn't want that to happen.

Related:

• Southwest Airlines' March Meltdown --- Less Than Meets the Eye
• Flying High: Southwest Airlines Posts Big February Gains
• Southwest Outperforming JetBlue, AirTran Where They Go Head-to-Head

Photo via Flickr user TheeErin