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Air travel in the U.S. is pretty abysmal when it comes to on-time flight schedules — this we know (and if you haven’t yet experienced the joy of commercial flight delays, just wait until the summer vacation season deepens). We also know that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel — in a word, NextGen, which promises to make major headway in streamlining flight schedules, and thereby eliminating many of the delays that plague major airports.
Of course, implementing NextGen in all U.S. airports will require a level of funding that causes many to balk. The quesion is, what’s the alternative if we don’t pay for it? Well, here’s our answer. And it’s not pretty. [SButtonZ button="digg"]
Graph by Martha Kang McGill
Interesting choice of airports – for example, Northwest has poor performance based on percentage of flights that were late, yet they don’t (or didn’t, pre-Delta merger) run many flights out of a lot of those airports. Neither of their biggest hubs (MSP and DTW) are on the chart.
I’d imagine there could be some sample size issues in using a small number of flights by one airline into one airport.
Why is EWR not on here? It certainly has a higher passenger count than many of the airports listed here — and, frankly, delays as bad as JFG or LGA.
This is a chicken graph, as Alex B points out. Where are MSP and DTW?
I’m not at all convinced that NexGen is going to do that much for delays. The root cause of the delays is that many airports (such as LGA) simply do not have the runway space to accommodate the schedules that the airlines insist on running. Nifty new air traffic control system or not, a given airport can accommodate no more than X number of planes per hour– and that number drops precipitously when the weather is bad, or there’s an incident on a runway forcing it to close, or even something as simple as a change in the direction of the prevailing winds. It’s not due to the air traffic control systems as much as spacing for wake turbulence; a smaller jet can’t have another airplane less than three miles behind it, a large one five; and that’s not going to change with NexGen at all, as it’s a function of the aerodynamics of large aircraft.
The thing I noticed is that of the fourteen airports listed only four (JFK/LGA/ORD/PHI) are in the snow belt. The non-snow belt member of the bottom four, SFO (aka San Francisco Int’l.), is a regular victim of rain delays due to runway configuration.
@ Jeremy – Don’t fixate on passenger flights. I know that at least SFO, probably others, have enough freight traffic that can eat landing slots and make it harder for an airport to catch up at the end / start of a busy day.
Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IATA_airport_code :
DTW – Detroit Metro / Wayne Co.
EWR – Newark Liberty Int’l.
MSP – Minneapolis / St. Paul Int’l.
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JFG – invalid code / prob. typo.
It is a strange list. If you go by “traffic movements,” which is any aircraft landing and taking off, both Denver (DEN) and Charlotte (CLT) would easily be on this list ahead of many others. I wouldn’t think it matters, but the inclusion of those airports would affect numbers for United and US Air.
I don’t understand why the graph is conflating late and canceled flights. A flight which is ten minutes late doesn’t even begin to approach the level of inconvenience of a canceled flight — and it also doesn’t differentiate between flights which are late due to weather versus those which are late due to tarmac congestion or mismanagement.
Philadelphia is PHL, not PHI.
I’m not going to blame Infrastructurists for thinking flight delays can be fixed by building new infrastructure… this is kind of your game. But the fundamental problem with flight delays in the US, in particular, the Northeast, namely JFK… is that ground traffic system in the US airports does not discriminate by the size of the airplane. Counting the number of aircraft delays is meaningless because it doesn’t tell the whole story. Counting the number of delayed passengers is more telling.
JFK is near paralysis because airlines are scheduling too many tiny airplanes (basically, I’m talking about regional jets) at peak departure time that take up valuable tarmac spaces around NYC. A 50 seat RJ takes the same amount of space as a 250 seat 767… you can see why we have a congestion and delay problem… it’s the non-discriminating use of our airport space. If you look at London Heathrow or Tokyo Narita, there are hardly any tiny regional jet departures at peak hours. Why? Because airlines have to pay a penalty if they use a small airplane (that and also the takeoff/landing slots are restricted and very expensive). Airport operators in the US must break out of their “moving airplanes” mindset and move into “moving people” mindset. When there is a queue to takeoff at JFK, they need to give priority to airplanes with more seats. And these airport authorities must realize they have a valuable commodity at their disposal… they need to start regulating the size of the airplanes (via slot auctions or fines for undersized planes at peak hours) that uses their runways. No amount of infrastructure improvement is going to change the flight delays if large US airports like JFK continue to give away their landing and takeoff slots for free.
“The quesion is, what’s the alternative if we don’t pay for it? Well, here’s our answer. And it’s not pretty. ”
The alternative is High-Speed Rail like the rest of the world. HSR would free up enormous amounts of airport space for long-distance flight.
@ Ted King
EWR is the ninth busiest American airport in terms of cargo traffic. (JFK is 7th). I find it strange that people outside of the NY metro area discount EWR’s importance on the national and regional level. It’s on of NYC’s main airports. . .
[...] The Infrastructurist displays a great graphic that summarizes flight delays at major US airports. A quick interpretation: be prepared to be behind when traveling to New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia or when flying on Northwest, JetBlue, AirTran, and American. Posted in Business and Economy, Places Tags: airlines, airports, flying, travel [...]