Despite its monthly update and web availability, the DOT Consumer Report published by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, remains largely elusive from the passenger trying to make a decision on a given flight. Now, it and other public flight information resources are being centralized into a new website that offers passengers an on-line index in what founder David Pelter calls 12 “pain points” in airline travel.
The new site, may do what passenger bills of rights, can’t now that the Department of Transportation has clarified its position on the subject. The department in responding to comments on its Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on ground-delays, cited the Airline Deregulation Act as pre-empting state bills on the subject. New York remains the only state to have enacted a passenger bill of rights but that was being tested before the state’s court of appeals last week. The ruling could forestall similar measures making their way through the legislatures of several states.
Regardless, InsideTrip.com, a new booking website, unveiled in test form last Tuesday, establishes a TripQuality score to provide “a true insider's view on how to buy travel.” Established last year, the InsideTrip.com’s rating service partners with Orbitz for ticketing and customer service. It taps into Pelter’s experience as a leader in pricing and planning departments of several of the world’s top airlines, according to the site. Pelter has also been involved in Farecast.com and Yapta.com. InsideTrip uses public records for the evaluations such as the Bureau of Transportation Statistics consumer reports, TSA’s checkpoint wait times and Flightstats which gives information on an individual flight’s on-time record. Still, it won’t explain the all-important why some flights are delayed more than others including the fact that airline policies impose more delays on regionals than on their own flights.
“As the only airline pricing executive ‘turncoat’ now running an online travel company, Dave's passion is providing consumers access to the best information to allow them to make the smartest possible travel decisions,” said the company, which is headquartered in Seattle, Wash.
InsideTrip provides not only prices but also aims to change the way consumers evaluate and buy travel. InsideTrip's TripQuality score is based on 12 unique elements of an airline itinerary including speed, comfort and ease. The speed components include number of stops, travel duration, on-time stats, and security wait time. On the comfort scale, InsideTrip evaluates legroom, aircraft type, aircraft age and percentage of seats filled. Finally, in the ease category it considers connect time, routing quality, lost bag rate and gate location.
Each itinerary is given an overall score out of 100 points and from poor to excellent. It displays the length of each itinerary and illustrates the ultimate convenience of a given trip. Travelers can customize the ranking of the “pain points” and can skip evaluations based on such things as lost bags if they always use carry-ons.
The New York Times Practical Traveler column highlighted the new service by illustrating its impact with a New York-Denver flight. “The cheapest option — a $310 flight on American Airlines that took more than six hours each way, including a change of planes in the massive Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport — had a trip quality score of 62. Speed and comfort were rated ‘very good,’ and ease of travel as ‘good,” said the newspaper. “The top pick, highlighted by a purple flowerlike symbol, was a nonstop flight on Frontier Airlines for just $12 more that offered more legroom, less travel time and had a better lost-bags rating. Its overall trip quality score was 89, with ‘excellent’ speed and comfort marks and ‘very good’ ease of travel.”
The new site comes as other travel sites have laid on additional information such as Travelocity’s color coding for nonstop versus connecting flights, according to the Times. The newspaper also noted that Orbitz provides airport delay information and threats to getting to the airport while Itasoftware.com also points out long layovers and tight connections.
“No other website out there is offering this degree of context,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, principal travel analyst at Forrester Research, who has previewed the site told the Times. “It helps you, as the traveler, understand the full value you’re getting.”

Latest BTS Stats
Meanwhile, BTS published its latest findings last week announcing airline on-time performance improved in January over December but slipped in the year-over-year comparison. As usual, regionals were impacted by major-partner policies that delay or cancel their flights before a mainline flight is cancelled or delayed. Regionals held two of the three worst records for on-time rates, with January including United, SkyWest and American Eagle. SkyWest and Mesa were also cited for having the most frequently delayed flights, taking all but one of the spots. The three – American Eagle, Mesa and SkyWest – were also cited for having the largest number of cancelled flights with Mesa in the lead at 6.5 percent of flights.
The nation’s largest airlines’ rate of on-time flights this past January was higher than in December but lower than in January 2007, according to the Air Travel Consumer Report released last week by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).
According to information filed with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), a part of DOT’s Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), the 20 carriers reporting on-time performance recorded an overall on-time arrival rate of 72.4 percent in January, down from January 2007’s 73.1 percent but an improvement over December 2007’s 64.3 percent.
The monthly report also includes data on flight cancellations and causes of flight delays, as well as information on reports of mishandled baggage filed with the carriers,
In January, the carriers filing on-time performance data reported that 8.42 percent of their flights were delayed by aviation system delays, compared to 10.41 percent in December; 8.41 percent by late-arriving aircraft, compared to 10.89 percent in December; 6.79 percent by factors within the airline’s control, such as maintenance or crew problems, compared to 9.15 percent in December; 0.88 percent by extreme weather, compared to 1.38 percent in December; and 0.07 percent for security reasons, compared to 0.08 percent in December. Weather is a factor in both the extreme-weather category and the aviation-system category. This includes delays due to the re-routing of flights by FAA in consultation with carriers. Weather is also a factor in delays attributed to late-arriving aircraft, although airlines do not report specific causes in that category.
Data collected by BTS also shows the percentage of late flights delayed by weather, including those reported in either the category of extreme weather or included in National Aviation System delays. In January, 43.56 percent of late flights were delayed by weather, up 4.51 percent from January 2007, when 41.68 percent of late flights were delayed by weather, and down 0.02 percent from December when 43.57 percent of late flights were delayed by weather.

Cancellations
The consumer report includes BTS data on the number of domestic flights canceled by the reporting carriers. In January, the carriers canceled 2.9 percent of their scheduled domestic flights, up from the 2.5 percent cancellation rate posted in January 2007 but down from the 3.5 percent rate recorded in December 2007.

Mishandled Baggage
The U.S. carriers reporting flight delays and mishandled baggage data posted a mishandled baggage rate of 7.37 reports per 1,000 passengers in January, an improvement over both January 2007’s rate of 8.19 and December 2007’s 9.01 rate.