Southwest Airlines jets at Baltimore/Washington International Airport on May 16, 2008.(Photo: Charles Dharapak, AP)


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Southwest Airlines will "tinker" with its flight schedule in an effort to improve its sagging on-time performance, The Associated Press reports.


CEO Gary Kelly tells the news agency that the carrier will add a more few minutes between some flights and will reconsider selling itineraries with tight connections.


Kelly's comments came after nearly a quarter of its flights arrived late in 2013, according to federal data. That gave Southwest the worst mark of the biggest U.S. carriers.


FULL REPORT: Southwest CEO vows to fix on-time problem (AP)


"We've got significant schedule changes that are planned for the summer," Kelly says to AP about the company's plan. "That's when I want to be monitoring the on-time performance and making sure that we see the improvement that we need. We need to get back to where we were for 2012."


Southwest placed 12th place out of 16 airlines that reported on-time data to the Department of Transportation in 2013. Just 76.7% of carrier's flights arrived on time in 2013, down from, 83.1% in 2012. The DOT considers a "late" flight as one that arrives 15 minutes or more after its scheduled arrival time.


Of the biggest U.S. airlines, Southwest's on-time results trailed American, Delta, United and US Airways.


Historically, Southwest has been a top performer for on-time flights in the U.S. industry. AP notes "it still ranks No. 1 all-time among the six big airlines that have been reporting such records to the government since 1987. But it hasn't topped the charts for a full year since 2001 and hasn't beaten all the other major carriers since 2009."


Some industry observers have pointed out that Southwest's performance has declined as the carrier has started service at busy major airports where operations can be challenging. Southwest had avoided such airports for much of its history. But, during the past decade, Southwest has expanded has to congested major airports like New York LaGuardia, Philadelphia and Newark Liberty.


AP notes Southwest was "once legendary for turning around incoming planes and sending them back out for the next flight in about 10 minutes." Now, however, Southwest's "turn time" has slowed to about 30 minutes.


In addition to adding congested airports to its route map, Southwest also is flying larger versions of the Boeing 737 that seat more passengers. More passengers – coupled with full planes – means it takes longer to for the airline to get everyone on and off their planes at the gate.


Also adding to the mix was a move by Southwest to start scheduling more flights into the peak hours of the day. The scheduling change was a nod to customers' preference, though AP says it "backfired" by hurting the carrier's on-time operations.


"We tried to get a little more aggressive in 2013, and it probably is the cause of our dip in on-time performance," Kelly tells AP.


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