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Photo credit: Elmer Fishpaw via Flickr
Next week Americans will engage in the annual Thanksgiving holiday tradition of fighting crowds—and delays—at the airport. So which locations are most likely to throw off your holiday plans? We took a look at the on-time arrival statistics over the past five years as tracked by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. We examined airports with the worst historical on-time performance during the month of November and then looked at just how bad it gets over the 12 days that make up the busy Thanksgiving travel period. The resulting list, a virtual airport hall of shame, will see a huge holiday traveler crunch next week. If you’re headed to any of these worst offenders—listed in order of airports with the most delays—we recommend bringing patience, a worry-free attitude and, well, a stack of magazines to pass the time.
Newark
Business travelers know that the words “Newark” and “ground delay” often go hand in hand. Just 63% of flights into Newark made it to the gate on time last Thanksgiving travel season, the worst on-time performance since at least 1999, which is as far back as the online transportation stats go. More bad news: Your return trip probably won’t be any better since only 59% of flights left on time.
New York LaGuardia
Fuggedabout an on-time arrival here. Just over half of all flights arrived at LaGuardia as scheduled last November, and the airport routinely brings up the rear on performance statistics. The icing on the cake? Once you actually make it to New York, you’ll likely encounter a slow crawl through bridge-and-tunnel traffic to get into Manhattan.
San Francisco
Fog, rain and wind—Bay Area weather staples—have derailed many a trip in and out of San Francisco. The airport often closes one of the two arrival runways during bad weather, so it’s no surprise that SFO routinely lands near the bottom of on-time performance stats. Last year, some 27% of all flights arrived late during the Thanksgiving travel week.
New York JFK
The airspace in the New York metropolitan area is among the most crowded in the world, and JFK Airport has been in the top five for the worst on-time arrivals over each of the last three Novembers. A quarter of all flights arrived late last Thanksgiving—a notable improvement over 2006, when 42% of flights were late. It’s not any better on the way out, especially during the evening hours, when international flight departures peak and aircraft often sit in line on the runway for an hour or more.
Chicago O’Hare
Don’t count on a prompt arrival into the Windy City. Last Thanksgiving nearly a third of flights were late, the worst performance since 2003. Want to blame winter weather for delays? Not so fast. Chicago’s Midway airport often ranks among the top airports for on-time arrivals.
Seattle
For the last five years, SeaTac has ranked among the bottom 10 airports for on-time arrivals during November. Headed there this holiday? Last year wasn’t without bumps. Nearly 20% of all flight arrivals during the Thanksgiving holiday were late, and 18% of departures were delayed.
Philadelphia
The City of Brotherly Love is not the city of on-time flights. This northeast hub often lands near the bottom in on-time performance during the month of November. A whopping 30% of arrivals were late during the peak Thanksgiving holiday period last year.
Boston
Nearly a quarter of flights into Boston were late last Thanksgiving, while a fifth were delayed in departing. The good news? On your return leg, you can wait out any delays with a microbrew at the Harpoon Tap Room in Terminal A or console yourself with a bowl of clam chowder at the airport outpost of Legal Sea Foods.
Miami
If you’re stopping in Miami to catch a connecting flight to the Caribbean, you might want to build in an extra long layover to avoid racing through the terminal to catch that last flight to St. Thomas. Last Thanksgiving, 28% of all flights into Miami arrived late, the worst performance for the airport so far this decade.
Washington Dulles
Since 2004, holiday flight delays at Dulles Airport outside of Washington, D.C., have consistently been pretty bad. Last year, 23% of all flights arrived at least 15 minutes late. Departures fared a little bit better, but travelers still had a one-in-five chance of encountering a delay.
