Sea-Tac Airport and its largest airline, Alaska Airlines, have again won top on-time honors.
Flight-tracking Web site FlightStats.com named Alaska as on-time arrival perfomance champ among major North American Airlines for 2011.
The site said Sea-Tac was the best of major international airports for on-time departures last year.
Both the airport and the airline won similar honors in 2010.
Alaska’s on-time arrival performance last year was a record 87.79 percent for the airline. That compares with an average performance of 76.40 percent on-time for other North American carriers in that category.
Sea-Tac departures averaged 86.28 percent on-time in 2011. Other airports in that same major international airports category racked up a 71.02 percent average on-time record.
Salt Lake City’s airport achieved a marginally higher on-time performance, 86.55 percent, among North American airports, but FlightStats didn’t consider it a major international airport, the category in which Sea-Tac won.
Hawaiian Airlines posted a better on-time arrival record than Alaska, 91.96 percent, but FlightStats considered the island carrier to be a regional airline.
Both Alaska and Sea-Tac may have a difficult time repeating the honors for a third year in a row. Last week’s snow and ice storm will put a big dent in the airline and airport January on-time figures.
Alaska canceled dozens of flights, and the airport operations lagged because planes, runways and taxiways were coated with a thick layer of ice. Planes in some cases took more than an hour to de-ice in preparation for flight.
In other awards, Seattle-based fashion retailer Nordstrom earned a new honor on Tuesday.
CareerBliss.com named the 180-store chain as the fourth-happiest place to work in its annual survey of 10,000 companies. The results were based on thousands of worker interviews.
The companies were judged on such criteria as work-life balance, worker-boss relations, career advancement opportunities and worker empowerment.
The top 10 list included a surprising number of heavy industry employers and manufacturers such as Chevron (10th), Centex Homes (6th), BASF (5th) and Fluor (2nd).
At the top of the list was hotelier Hilton Worldwide. The top 10 list also included Swedish cellphone maker Ericsson (9th), the U.S. Air Force (7th), and Johnson and Johnson (3rd).
John Gillie: 253-597-8663 john.gillie@thenewstribune.com
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