Hope you didn’t waste your time (as I did) searching for information about punctuality of EU airlines - it simply doesn’t exist. Want proof? Just look at the European Commission’s website, obviously designed to publish ‘Community Quality and Punctuality Indicators Table’ (you can see it here*). You won’t find anything resembling the on-time performance of European airlines, except the selected links leading to airlines associations' websites related to ‘flight punctuality and baggage treatment’. But that is not all – the EC actually disapproves the content of the suggested links by declaring that ‘...the information herein containted has not been adopted or in any way approved by the European Commission’ and ‘The European Commission does not guarantee the accuracy of the information made available, nor does it accept responsibility for any use made thereof.’ This may leave confused those in need for such information.
I can understand reasons behind these statements and do share the opinion that contents of AEA, ERAA and Eurocontrol’s punctuality reports should not be used for serious consideration before the sources of data and their accuracy are thoroughly checked (much of the explanation is given in my book, but will blog about this later). However, the common measures of quality of airline operational performance cannot remain hidden from public eyes. The European Commission bears a lot of responsibility to do something about it. Their counterparts on the other side of Atlantic have been doing this for years: reporting on disruptions in the US is mandatory for air carriers that have at least 1 percent of total domestic passenger revenues on scheduled services (about 20 airlines).The data is collected by the Department of Transportation and published monthly in a comprehensive Air Travel Consumer Report (available here).
The importance of organizing the disruption (not just delay) reporting system in Europe needs to be addressed more vigorously - without knowing the true magnitude of problems, they can hardly be resolved. Industry experts estimate that European airlines, passengers, and the economy lose tens of billions of Euros annually due to disrupted operations. This includes things such as waste in fuel, capacities, labour and maintenance, lost productivity, missed business opportunities and many more.
Information about airline disruptions in Europe needs to be standardised, and made publicly available. Alternatively, as one of the industry experts said, the failure to provide public information about disruptions and their causes will aggravate the situation and contribute to a steady decline in the airline industry’s credibility with the public.
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*link to punctuality reporting has been removed from EU website in the meantime. In 2010 Association of European Airlines (AEA) 'ceased publishing punctuality data as it was heavily workloaded and did not provide added value for AEA and its members.'
