Dealing with meeting or incentive clients who hate dealing with late flights? You might want to steer them away from traveling through the airports in Provo, Utah, Orlando, Fla., and Dallas Fort/Worth, which topped a new list of airports with the longest flight delays.
Places to Travel, a travel information website, researched Bureau of Transportation Statistics data and concluded that Provo Airport had the longest average flight delays—1 hour, 43 minutes—among U.S. airports between January 2023 and February 2024.
Furthermore, of the 2,194 flights that landed at the Provo airport, almost 40 percent were delayed.
So Many Airports, So Many Delays
Orlando Sanford International Airport — a much bigger and busier airport — experienced average flight delays of 1 hour, 35 minutes, while that number was 1 hour, 29 minutes at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. About 28 percent of Orlando flights were delayed 15 minutes or more, as were 21 percent of flights to Dallas/Fort Worth.
Other airports found to have outsized issues with flight delays included Charlotte Douglas International Airport (1 hour, 28 minutes average flight delay, 19 percent of flights late), and Philadelphia International Airport (1 hour, 26 minute average, 21 percent of flights late).
Rounding out the top 10 most tardy airports were:
- John F. Kennedy International Airport
- Pete Clearwater International Airport
- Montgomery (Alabama) Regional Airport
- Punta Gorda (Florida) Airport
- Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport
“Interestingly, the data doesn’t show a clear trend with regard to the size of airports,” said Jason Wilson, CEO of Places to Travel. “People may be perhaps forgiven for thinking that due to the sheer number of flights arriving at some of the larger airports such as San Diego International or Nashville International, these larger airports would regularly be seeing far bigger delays.”
Wilson said the data show that “a massive number of flights are delayed, resulting in traveler stress and potential missed connections, among other consequences, and the air travel infrastructure needs to urgently adapt to handle the massive volumes of passengers to rectify this.”
Hilo International Airport in Hawaii was found to have the shortest average flight delays—40 minutes.
This post first appeared at Prevue’s sister site, recommend.com.
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