COLUMBUS, Ohio — Oil prices fell Wednesday with a government report showing that crude inventories continued to grow, suggesting that demand for oil and gasoline will not rebound anytime soon.

Light, sweet crude for February delivery fell 50 cents to settle at $37.28 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange after trading as high as $39.45. Prices have fallen from as high as $50.47 just last week with evidence growing that a weakened economy has eaten away at energy demand.

The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said crude inventories grew by 1.2 million barrels last week. That was below the expectation of 3 million barrels, according to the average of estimates in a survey of analysts by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill. Yet the department said in last week's report that oil stocks jumped 6.7 million barrels the previous week, meaning less crude is being used.

Gasoline inventories rose by 2.1 million barrels, 300,000 barrels ahead of analyst estimates, and distillates increased by 6.4 million barrels compared with the estimate of a gain of 1.7 million distillates.

ATLANTA — U.S. airlines' on-time performance, baggage handling and domestic cancellation rates were not as good in November compared to the previous month, but improved over a year earlier, the Transportation Department said.The agency also said it received fewer complaints about airline service.Regional carrier Atlantic Southeast Airlines, which had the worst on-time performance in October, again had the worst on-time performance in November, while Hawaiian Airlines had the best on-time performance in November.The DOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics said the 19 carriers reporting on-time performance recorded an overall on-time arrival rate of 83.3 percent in November, an improvement over November 2007's 80 percent rate but below the rate of 86 percent recorded in October 2008.Carriers in November canceled 0.8 percent of scheduled domestic flights, below the 1 percent rate of November 2007 but higher than the 0.6 percent rate for October 2008.The airlines overall had a mishandled baggage rate of 3.75 reports per 1,000 passengers in November.