Aerolineas Is Terrible

In the face of continued large-scale delays at local airports, today Aerolineas Argentinas was hit with even more bad news. A new study conducted by the Asociación Argentina de Derecho del Turismo (Argentina Tourism Rights Association) ranked both Aerolineas Argentinas and its sister company Austral as two of the top five worst airlines in terms of punctuality. It is obvious things are going bad for the Argentinian carriers when only Air Algérie, Royal Nepal and Sudan Airways have worse on-time records.

The study tracked 90 airlines, both at local airports and at principal airports around the world, and found that Aerolineas and Austral were only on-time 27% and 23% of the time, respectively. With that sort of poor track record, one might expect an apologetic response from the airline. Here is what Jorge Molina, manager of Corporate Affairs for Aerolineas, had to say.

"There are other factors that affect punctuality that are not the airline's responsibility. If we were responsible for air control, checking baggage and Immigration then yes, we would we responsible (for punctuality). We are responsible for about 25% of the punctuality problems.

At least they accepted 25% of the blame. Kudos to Diego Benitez, president of the Asociación Argentina de Derecho del Turismo, for coming up with this snappy response.

"I disagree. We studied all the companies at Ezeiza. If there were so many problems, how could it be that (Panamanian carrier) Copa is on time 89% of the time? There are some domestic routes in which Aerolineas is sometimes completely unpunctual."

Although I continue to feel bad for Aerolineas travelers, many of whom are currently suffering mass delays because too many pilots took unscheduled vacations, I must say that if feels pretty good to see a study confirming something I have been complaining about for months.