US airlines reported an ontime arrival rate of 80% in November, an improvement over the 79.1% achieved in November 2004 but a drop from October's rate of 81.3%, according to the "Air Travel Consumer Report" released yesterday by the US Dept. of Transportation.

As usual, Hawaiian Airlines posted the best ontime arrival rate at 95.2%. Frontier Airlines was next at 85.3%. JetBlue Airways ranked last of the 20 reporting carriers at 74.6%, with Northwest Airlines at 74.9%. Delays at JetBlue did not lead to cancellations, however, as the LCC finished tops in completion factor with just two cancelled flights during November. Continental Airlines and Frontier cancelled 0.1% of their flights. Comair had the most cancellations with 2.4%, followed by SkyWest Airlines and Atlantic Southeast Airlines at 1.9%. The overall cancellation rate of 1% was an improvement over November 2004's 1.2% and October 2005's 1.8%. Airlines reported a mishandled baggage rate of five reports per 1,000 passengers, worse than the year-ago month's 4.53 and October's 4.9.