Weather hurts airline performances

U.S. airlines posted their worst first-quarter performance on late flights in 11 years as they struggled with bad weather and an overloaded air-traffic control system.

One in four flights, or 25.25%, arrived at least 15 minutes late in the first three months of this year, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics said Monday. That was the highest rate for the first quarter since 25.50% in 1996.

U.S. airlines had to cope with storms such as the one in New York on Feb. 14 and an air-traffic system that even the government acknowledges needs upgrading.

The 20 largest airlines, including AMR Corp.’s American Airlines and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines, report delay data to the government.

“The system has reached the saturation point,” said Marion Blakey, chief of the Federal Aviation Administration, in an April 13 speech. “If the system is stretched tight when the weather’s good, we don’t have a prayer when the storms roll in.”

The 23.8% of flights that arrived late in March was the airlines’ worst performance in that month since statistics began being kept in the current format in 1995, said the statistics bureau, part of the Transportation Department.

US Airways Group Inc. ranked last in the first quarter, with 62.4% of flights arriving on time, the department said.

Storms in the U.S. Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions hurt the carrier’s operations in February and March, and a switch to a new reservations system caused delays in early March, a US Airways spokeswoman said.