There were apparently some people who weren’t so happy that I characterized SkyWest’s new livery as boring, so I’m going to make it up to you guys by talking about something they’ve done right. Let’s talk about what’s been going on at its relatively new subsidiary, Atlantic Southeast (ASA)

You may remember (probably not) that SkyWest bought fellow Delta Connection partner Atlantic Southeast (PDF) back in September of 2005. ASA was a mess of an airline with pretty much nothing going right, but worst of all was its dismal baggage handling abilities. Meanwhile, SkyWest ran what was generally considered to be one of the best regional operations around. So could they fix it?

For the longest time, it didn’t appear to be possible, but now, the latest Air Travel Consumer Report shows movement. Check out this chart showing ASA’s baggage handling performance over the last two years.

These numbers are baggage complaints per 1,000 passengers. I’ve already ranted on how this stat makes no sense because it should be based on the number of bags checked, but it still can give us trends. Clearly, the spike last August was due to the new liquid rules onboard, and the large increase in the number of bags, but since the beginning of the year, things have gone very well.

Kudos to SkyWest for getting the baggage handling operation at ASA in shape. Now, how do you know if you’re flying on ASA? Well,they fly solely as Delta Connection and primarily out of Atlanta. So this is an important development for Delta fliers who go through Atlanta (that means everyone).