Extreme Delays: Which Flights Are the Worst

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The Wall Street Journal

THE MIDDLE SEAT
By SCOTT MCCARTNEY

Extreme Delays: Which Flights Are the Worst
Analysis of Government Data Shows Why Certain Trips Are More Likely to Be Afflicted
January 22, 2008; Page D1

Extreme delays that leave passengers trapped on airplanes for hours may seem as random as the weather. But those on-board nightmares that have garnered so much attention are more predictable than you think. An analysis of extreme-delay data from last year shows clear patterns: Certain airlines and certain airports were more prone than others to long delays before takeoff and very late arrivals. Even certain flights had repeated trouble with very long delays.

When storms are forecast, for example, you might be wise to pack some food and tote your own water if traveling on Delta Air Lines Flight 133 from New York's Kennedy Airport to Los Angeles International Airport. That flight sat for more than three hours waiting to take off after pushing back from a gate on seven different days last year, according to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That was more than any other flight. Delta's Flight 31 on the same route had "taxi-out" times longer than three hours on six occasions, as did Continental Express Flight 2450 from Syracuse, N.Y., to Newark, N.J. Eight other flights ended up with taxi-out delays of three hours or more five different times.

Airlines say some flights simply end up at the end of long lines more often than others because they try to depart at the airport's busiest time. But it can be more than just unfortunate timing. Airline operations managers can juggle departures because of factors like which crews may run out of duty time first, which planes are more urgently needed for their next scheduled flight, which flights have the most high-dollar business travelers who they least want to be canceled, and which flights are headed to destinations with late-night curfews -- where airlines can be fined for flights arriving after a certain hour.

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Another factor that affects extremely long sitting: Airlines are less likely to cancel flights that move on to other hubs in their systems rather than turn around and go back to the same airport they just left. If a plane is going out and back to the same hub, canceling the trip just impacts those two flights. But if the aircraft is scheduled to move on to numerous cities, canceling that flight could disrupt many more customers. As a result, aircraft that aren't scheduled for "turns" are more likely to sit and wait long periods before the flight gets canceled. (Unfortunately there's no way for travelers to get this information about their flight.)

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Airlines with highest percentage in 2007 of flights delayed 45 minutes or more
• Atlantic Southeast: 15.1%
• JetBlue: 13.8%
• American: 13.6%
And the lowest ...
• Hawaiian: 1.69%
• Frontier: 6.10%
• Southwest: 6.13%
Highest average length of delays
• JetBlue: 67 minutes
• Mesa: 64 minutes
• ExpressJet: 64 minutes
• Atlantic Southeast: 62 minutes
• American: 61 minutes
Lowest average delay
• Frontier: 43 minutes
• Southwest: 48 minutes
• Northwest: 49 minutes
• US Airways: 49 minutes
• Hawaiian: 50 minutes
Source: FlightStats.com.



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