South Korean budget carrier Eastar Jet saw the highest rate of delay for international routes among seven local airlines in 2014, data compiled by the Transport Ministry showed Wednesday.
The Seoul-based airline placed at the bottom of on-time departure statistics for the 12-month period ending in December, with 20 of 2,653 flights, or 0.75 percent, delayed by more than an hour of the original schedule due to aircraft maintenance issues.
Eastar Jet, which showed the worst performance in flight delay for two consecutive years, declined to comment on the series of delays when contacted by phone.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport revealed the flight delay and cancellation data based on 158,191 flights of 76 airlines from 32 countries using airports in South Korea.
With a flight delay rate of 0.14 percent, the country’s No. 1 airline Korean Air was the top of the list among domestic carriers, followed by Air Busan and Jin Air with 0.27 percent.
Sixty-four out of 44,871 outbound flights Korean Air’s failed to meet the scheduled flight departure time last year.
Along with Eastar Jet, three other airlines ― Asiana Airlines and budget carriers T’way Air and Jeju Air ― had departure delay rates higher than 0.3 percent, the average rate of all flights operating in Korea.
By Park Han-na (
hnpark@heraldcorp.com)