The Best Airports

Time's recent cover story on the cancellation of flights showed some data regarding the airports with the largest number of cancellations. Chicago's O'Hare and Dallas-Fort Worth showed up at the top of the list. Atlanta also made the top 10. These are some of the busiest airports in the US and the world. So I looked at the percentage of cancellations and delays for the month of January 2014. I expected to find that some airports are better at dealing with weather than others.

While Chicago and Atlanta had a lot of cancellations, their percentage is relatively low. I expected Minneapolis-St. Paul to be one of the better ones because they deal with adverse weather 5 months of the year (or more it seems to residents); it's not. With the high rate of problems in Washington DC, however, and their effects on politicians, I expected more help for the beleaguered power-brokers that fly in and out a lot. Maybe they just use Baltimore's Thurgood Marshall Airport which is nearer to the bottom of the list than Reagan or Dulles.

The table below shows arrival and departure effects with regards to cancellations and delays.

 I'm not sure how Denver ends up with a more than 100% delayed and canceled. Perhaps flights are delayed more than once quite a few times. Also, the stats may include air taxi and other general aviation data that's not included in the total operations data.

Good thing the airlines have figured out how to keep the delays from being more than 3 hours while passengers are sitting on the plane.