Well, there is good news and bad news. The carriers at Akron-Canton Airport had a solid operational year. The US Department of Transportation compiles a Consumer Air Travel Report that lists things like delays, lost baggage and complaints. Some times I wish they'd look at "totally satisfied lovers of air travel" but apparently the government doesn't track that sort of stuff. Any way, here's how our carriers (that report to the government that is- many don't report like United Express and Northwest Airlink- because they don't have to) fared.

For the month of December our carriers were on-time 65.5% and 69.8% for arriving and departing flights. Not too bad for December. It's not exactly stellar either. Our own records show that approximately 80% of our flights depart within 30 minutes of a scheduled departure. That's pretty good. Remember that a high percentage of our flights are going to really cool (but busy) places like New York, Boston, Atlanta Philadelphia and Denver. That definitely impacts our on-time performance but on-time isn't everything. People clearly want to fly to these destinations. There are places that are less busy (because fewer people want to fly there). So, even though we aren't always on top for on-time, I wouldn't trade the cool places our carriers serve for a higher ranking.

There is good news too. Our largest carriers rarely cancel flights (AirTran 1.1%, Frontier .3% and Delta Connection 1.8%).

Now get this... Frontier Airlines didn't get a single complaint in the month of December. I guess passengers can't complain about liveTV and brand new Airbus jets.

Here's a cool tidbit too. For year end 2005, AirTran came in #2 for the lowest number of mishandled bags (only 3.45 per 1,000 bags). Well done CAK carriers!