Hawaiian Air No. 2 for being on time during October

Hawaiian Airlines finished second for punctuality in October after having dropped to 11th the previous month.

The state’s top airline arrived on time for 90.7 percent of its flights, trailing just Delta Air Lines at 92.1 percent, according to data released Monday by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The national average was 87.0 percent — the third-best on-time performance in the 21 years that comparable records are available. Spirit Airlines was the only reporting airline below 80 percent with an on-time performance of 78 percent. An airline is considered “on time” if it arrives within 14 minutes of its scheduled arrival time.

“Our employees worked extremely hard to mitigate multiple external factors, such as airport construction, that hampered our punctuality in August and September,” Hawaiian President and CEO Mark Dunkerley said in an email.

Hawaiian, which has led all U.S. carriers in on-time performance for each of the past 11 years, has been first in five of the 10 months reported so far this year. It is coming off of two tough months where it ranked 11th in September at 84.2 percent and third in August at 81.5 percent — the latter marking the airline’s worst performance in more than a decade in terms of on-time percentage. Since the company began reporting statistics to the DOT in January 2004, Hawaiian’s on-time performance always has been above 81.5 percent.

Dunkerley said he anticipates Hawaiian’s on-time performance in November will be in line with the airline’s performance in October.

“Our preliminary figures show that our on-time-performance in November was above 90 percent, and that’s very encouraging,” he said. “The operational adjustments made in October continued. Our Team Kokua employee volunteer brigade took additional steps during the Thanksgiving travel season to make sure our check-in process was managed smoothly by volunteering their time to assist travelers arriving for flights.”

Dunkerley earlier said that the airline’s on-time performances in August and September were the result of congestion due to Honolulu Airport’s modernization construction, increased flights and passenger traffic that resulted in a shortage of gates, delays in processing passengers through customs and immigration during the midmorning peak, and operational stoppages due to lightning strikes at airports throughout the state.

In other categories for October, Hawaiian ranked third for fewest cancellations with 0.2 percent, or 12 flights overall, of 6,242 scheduled flights. Overall, the 13 reporting airlines canceled 2,454 flights, or 0.5 percent of their schedules in October, marking the second-best figure all-time to the 0.4 percent rate recorded in September. Envoy Air had the most cancellations at 1.2 percent of operations, while Delta Air Lines had the fewest at 0.0 percent even though there were 17 cancellations.

Hawaiian was eighth in fewest mishandled-baggage reports with 2.72 per 1,000 passengers. The national average was 2.49. Envoy had the most mishandled-baggage reports at 4.85, while Virgin America had the fewest at 0.74.

Hawaiian also was eighth in fewest consumer complaints with 1.46 per 100,000 passengers, but that still was ahead of the national average of 1.71. Spirit had the highest rate of complaints at 11.71, and Alaska Airlines had the lowest at 0.43.

Hawaiian also reported the death of one animal during October. A female bulldog was unresponsive upon arrival in Honolulu on a flight from Los Angeles. The cargo fee and cremation fee were refunded.