Brace For Summer Travel: American Airlines Tops List For Most Delays, Cancellations, Lost Bags

by Gary Leff on June 11, 2024

American Airlines says their operations are improved, and they’ve become a much more reliable airline. The data they report to the government does not bear this out, but they’re insistent that if you dig deeper they’ll come out looking better.

Overall, though, if passengers are getting delayed, cancelled, and diverted – and if their bags are lost, or they’re turned away from flying completely despite having a ticket – Department of Transportation reports shows that it’s probably happening on American Airlines. And American expects 72 million passengers this summer.

Here’s the claim:

• American Airlines CEO Robert Isom opened the carrier’s earnings call after the January through March quarter wrapped, “The American Airlines team continues to build a more reliable, efficient and resilient airline. I’d like to thank our team for running a fantastic operation.”
• Chief Operating Officer David Seymour says, “We’re continuing the momentum that we started well over a year ago, almost two years, of just really strong operating performance.”

Here’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics data from the first quarter:

Cancellation and delay data alone doesn’t tell us how well an airline is operating. This is the highest-level data, and there are reasons for delay from mechanical issues and lack of crew (“controllable”) to weather and air traffic control issues (where the airline says it isn’t their fault, although how well they respond to and recover from these issues certainly is).

• Storms in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions were worse in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. This year there were multiple significant storm events, including severe thunderstorms, snowstorms, and high winds, and reports on insured losses are higher this year than last for the same period.
• American has hubs in New York, Philadelphia, and D.C. as well as down to Charlotte. While United has a big presence in New York and DC, American’s combined presence is greater in the region.
• On the other hand, storms were more modest in Dallas and Florida year-over-year.

An American Airlines spokesperson provided data on their completion factor and their controllable completion factor (which excludes weather, air traffic control, and other issues they’ve deemed outside of their influence, though doesn’t speak to operating on-time).

• American’s first quarter performance on both metrics was its best in the last decade, though 1Q24 controllable completion factor wasn’t materially distinguishable from 2023’s performance.
• Both certainly represented significant improvement over pandemic lows in performance.

The airline also highlights greater use of computer tools to recover their operation more quickly, noting that this works best at their large hubs.

American doesn’t look great overall during the first quarter, and with a terrible weather-ending to May in North Texas (along with running out of crew reserves, and I understand a less-than-usual willingness of flight attendants to volunteer for extra premium pay trips to help out given contract negotiations), they’re not going to look good in May either.

And weather doesn’t really explain why American continues to be the worst for lost bags and involuntarily denying boarding to passengers.

I recently wrote that American’s operation has been reported to be better but that I could not figure out why (i.e. “what’s different”) and that made me think there was a lot of luck in risk in any improvement. It looks like I was more right than I even realized. American Airlines has more delayed flights, more cancelled flights, and more lost bags than any other U.S. carrier, even as there were mitigating weather factors in the Northeast and Mid-atlantic during the first quarter.

The airline’s thesis has been that if they could become reliable, then they’d be profitable. I’ve mostly taken them at their word that they’ve improved reliability, and wondered then why aren’t they profitable? Clearly reliability is a baseline, it’s table stakes, but to earn a revenue premium and have customers choose to spend more to fly a particular airline then the product also has to be appealing.

American Airlines needs to do both. They need to operate reliably, so they don’t chase away customers which they were doing even before the pandemic. And they need to offer a compelling product that will entice high value passengers – which they need because they are a high cost airline, and their costs are going to be going up once they sign a new flight attendant contract.

This summer, though, more delays, more cancellations, more lost bags and more denied boardings are likely to happen on American Airlines than other airlines based on how each has performed so far this year.

More From View from the Wing