Drawing on data from the Department of Transportation, Newsweek has created a map showcasing the U.S. airports with the worst rates of on-time departures.
Why It Matters
Airport delays have received increased attention recently due to ongoing issues at Newark Liberty Airport, including several radar and communications systems outages since late April. These issues and the delays they have caused have prompted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to propose limiting the number of arrivals and departures the airport handles.
Adding to this is a series of weather-related delays across the New York City area this week, which the FAA estimates have been pushing some travelers’ schedules back for several hours.
What To Know
The above map, based on data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics’ Air Travel Consumer Report, shows the ten airports with the worst on-time departure rates in the U.S. this January.
Concord-Padgett Regional Airport is in last place, with only 54 percent of its flights leaving on time. The reliever airport, which serves the Charlotte metropolitan area of North Carolina and provides additional capacity to Charlotte Douglas International, is followed by West Virginia’s Morgantown Municipal Airport and Toledo Express Airport in Ohio, both at 54.8 percent.
The airports that fill out the rest of the list have similarly low on-time arrival rates, but they are well below the average of the over 300 included in the BTS report. Several, such as Nevada’s Elko Regional Airport or Pocatello Airport in Idaho, maintained on-time arrival and departure rates in the mid-90 percent range in January.
According to a separate report released Thursday by the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund, which utilizes BTS data, complaints against U.S. airlines over delays soared to a record 66,675 in 2024, a nearly 9 percent increase over 2023.
What People Are Saying
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Sunday on Meet The Press: “What you see in Newark is going to happen in other places across the country. It has to be fixed, and so what we’re having is some telecom issues, but we’re also having some glitches in our software. As the information comes in, it’s overloading some of our lines, and the system goes down. So I’ll just tell you specifically in Newark, we believe we’re going to have it up and running in short order.”
The U.S. PIRG Education Fund, in its report published Thursday: “Both cancellations and delays increased overall in 2024 compared with 2023. The remainder of 2025 is a question mark now that air traffic controller shortages are creating chaos at Newark Liberty International Airport, one of the nation’s busiest, and various other airports at different times.”
What Happens Next
Whether delays and cancellations will increase further in 2025 remains unclear, though the expected uptick in global air travel could influence this.
Global passenger traffic is projected to increase by nearly 7 percent this year, according to the International Air Transport Association, surpassing five billion travelers for the first time in history.
The post Map Shows Which US Airports Have the Most Delays appeared first on Newsweek.
