Those stressful hours lost in the airport because your flight was delayed might become a distant memory. It seems that airline passengers experienced less delays in July, according to the US Transportation Department. It appears that 77.6% of airline flights arrived on time, as opposed to 75.7% for July 2008. The numbers also show an improvement for June ’09, when the on-time rate was 76.1%. This improvement is most likely due to the fact that airlines fly less, on average, during recession.

According to the same source, Southwest Airlines Co. was on-time 80.7% of the time, followed by US Airways Group Inc. with 80.6% and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines at 79.6%. The lowest on-time rate out of American lines belongs to American Airlines with 72.2% of flights arriving as scheduled. A flight is considered on-time if it lands within 15 minutes of the scheduled time; canceled or diverted flights are counted as late.

If we were to take into account all of the 19 airlines operating US airports, Hawaiian Airlines had the best arrival scores, with 93.6% of its flights being on-time. A subsidiary of Delta Airlines, Comair, “finished” last with 63.6%.

The biggest cause for delays is, according to airline companies, is the late arrival of the plane used on the delayed flight. That plane is, ironically operated by the same airline. Other causes of delays include airport operations or heavy traffic. Weather had a very small impact on delays, of under 1%.

Airlines lost fewer baggages too – the rate of lost baggages in July ’09 was 3.98 for 1.000 passengers, as opposed to 4.87 in July 2008. (via WSJ.com)