Spirit Airlines—no, that was not a typo—was the most on-time major North American carrier in October, getting 87.8 percent of flights to the gate within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival times, according to FlightStats. While Spirit perennially has struggled with on-time performance, the carrier has cut down on delays in recent years through route planning and new aircraft, CEO Robert Fornaro said in Spirit's third-quarter earnings call. Excluding the impact of hurricanes, on-time performance in the third quarter would have been up 2.2 percentage points year over year, he said. "We used to be on the bottom every day," Fornaro said. "Now we're in the middle and sometimes on top, which is where we want to be." Delta, which had been the most on-time major North American carrier the two previous months, was the second most punctual carrier, followed by Alaska and United.
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