When you are carrying your luggage through the airport and waiting to board a plane, what's the most frustrating thing that could happen? A flight delay. Most of the time, you don't even know how long you'll have to wait before your flight takes off.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China recently released a report detailing the operating efficiency of China's airlines last year. According to the report, the total number of takeoffs and landings in the country increased to 7.5 million flights in 2014 from 3.4 million flights in 2006, an increase of 10.8 percent every year on average. However, the rate of on-time performance, or OTP, dropped slightly to 68.37 percent, down 1.46 percent per year on average.
In 2014, 36.09 percent of delayed flights were delayed by 30 minutes or less, and only 2.88 percent of delays were longer than 4 hours.
The factors that most severely impacted OTP were problems with airline companies' operations, traffic and weather, accounting for 26.41 percent, 25.33 percent and 24.34 percent of delays, respectively. Airport management, passenger behavior, unrealistic scheduling and public safety also caused some of the delays.
Air China, one of the largest and busiest Chinese airlines, was top-notch in timeliness, with 73.49 percent of its flights arriving on time. China Southern Airlines came in second with overall OTP of 72.61 percent, followed by Sichuan Airlines with 71.76 percent.
China United Airlines had the worst record with only 55.57 percent of its flights arriving on time. Hebei Airlines and Tibet Airlines also performed poorly with overall OTP of 58.82 percent and 59.19 percent, respectively.
The following are the top 10 Chinese airlines with the worst on-time performance.
Spring Airlines(春秋航空公司)
Spring Airlines [File photo]
Headquarters: Shanghai
Year founded: 2004
Overall OTP in 2014: 64.99 percent
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