On Time Performance of AirAsia & other airlines.

one reason I think AirAsia will continue to growth is its great on-time performance. An airlines that has a consistent punctuality will win the customers' respect and build up its name, thus gain a bigger market share in long run.

In this article, I just want to show: how good actually is the the on-time performance of AirAsia?

Here's the figures I get from AirAsia's website:
* a flight is considered on-time if it departs no later than 15 minutes from the schedule time.

From the chart, its two months (Aug & Sep) average performance is about 88%, Three months average (Jul~Sep) is about 85%.

We have to make a comparison to show how good is this figures. First, Lets compare the on-time performance of Jetstar Airways. (data from jetstar's website: http://www.jetstar.com/).

We can see that the on-time performance of AirAsia is as good as Jetstar's. And, Jetstar is the winner of the Best Low-cost Airlines (worldwide) in Skytrax's World Airline Awards 2007. I think this shows that AirAsia's performance is among the best in the world. (of cource, in this comparison, we assume that the figures announced on both airlines' website are true and reliable.)

Then, how about the comparisons with others airlines?

After some searching through the internets, I found that most Airlines do not publish their on-time performance on their web-site. However, we can get some statistics from http://www.flightstats.com/. Although the figures at this website only reflect the 20 most active routes for each airlines, it shouldn't be much different from the actual values.

Here's the figures I get from the website for some of the best airlines worldwide:
(statistic period: 15-Aug 2007 ~ 15-Oct 2007)

Low Cost Carriers:

Air Berlin	80%
easyJet	80%
Jetblue Airways	76%
Jetstar Airways	81%
Southwest Airlines	83%
Tiger Airways	85%

Full Service Carriers:

Singapore Airlines	84%
Thai Airways	79%
Cathay Pacific Airways	75%
Qatar Airways	73%
Qantas Airways	73%
Malaysia Airlines	76%

(It is quite a strange phenomenon that the LCCs perform better than those full service carrier. I guess maybe it's easier to be on-time for short-range flights. )

Unfortunately, the statistics about AirAsia at http://www.flightstats.com/ is incomplete, because it contains only figures for routes to Macau (which is about 65% on-time). This figures of single destination may be very different from the overall performance of AirAsia. For other routes which they don't have any data, they just quote 0% on-time-performance and 100% flight-cancellation. This does not reflect the real situation.

So, we can't double check the reliability of the on-time performance figures announced at AirAsia's website. However, according to my own experience (I've flown with AirAsia twice in September, and each flight I took depart on-time) and some of my friends' recently, I personally believe that error on the announced figures should be within 5%. So, lets assume that the real figure is 5% lower than the officially announced, the two-month-average performance of AirAsia (Aug & Sep-2007) still stand above80% (88% - 5% = 83%).

Conclusion: AirAsia on-time performance ranks among the best worldwide. Its performance is much better than those full service carrier like MAS, giving it an opportunity to grab a bigger market share in the future. I belive LCC model will continue to shake the aviation industry, and AirAsia will continue to grow and become the leading LCC in the reagion.