Spirit tops US airlines in on-time arrivals

Spirit Airlines tops the latest ratings for ontime flights, a big turnaround for a discount carrier that consistently ranked as the tardiest airline in America three years ago.

Spirit also has the second-lowest rate of canceled flights in the latest government report.

It still has a high rate of passenger complaints, and some travelers avoid it and other budget airlines because of their reputation for poor service. If travelers come to see them as reliable, however, discount airlines could pose a greater threat to bigger competitors. The Transportation Department said Friday that 89 percent of Spirit’s flights in October arrived on time, putting it just ahead of frequent winner Hawaiian Airlines and Delta Air Lines.

It’s the first time the Miramar, Floridabased carrier has topped the rankings. It finished second in November 2017.

Spirit had the worst on-time performance every month but one between May 2015 and May 2016. “We started looking at every part of the company,” said Greg Christopher, the vice president in charge of Spirit’s operations control center. “We got a little bit smarter about how we scheduled.”

Spirit operates many red-eye flights, and some planes were scheduled to run nearly around the clock for two or three days. If bad weather or a mechanical problem caused a single flight to be delayed, “it just cascaded through the next 15, 20 flights,” Christopher said.

The airline tries to limit using the same plane for red-eyes on consecutive nights, and has added room to its schedule in other ways.