Ready for Takeoff
Dallas airport lands a top spot for biggest drop in flight delays
Good news for those flying the friendly skies this summer. A new study shows that Dallas Love Field has improved more than almost any other major U.S. airport when it comes to seasonal flight delays.
CompareCards used a decade of data from the U.S. Department of Transportation to see which of the nation’s 50 busiest airports "tend to suffer the most frequent delays in the summertime." The site then ranked the best and worst airports for on-time summer travel and highlighted which airports saw the most improvements from one year to the next.
Love Field, with an 8.2 percent improvement in on-time arrival rates from 2017 to 2018, ranks No. 2 for biggest improvements. The Texas-heavy list includes Houston Hobby at No. 1, with a 10.9 percent improvement; Bush Intercontinental at No. 6, 3.5 percent improvement; and San Antonio International Airport at No. 9, 2.7 percent improvement.
Why the drastic improvements? CompareCards points to the thousands of flights canceled when Hurricane Harvey hit Houston and the Texas coast in summer 2017. "Operations at both major Houston airports (Hobby and Bush) were heavily affected," as were flight schedules at other Texas airports, the study says, noting that the disruption "led to Houston Hobby having the biggest drop in on-time arrivals in 2018’s Summer Flight Delay Study."
Hobby, Love, and the other Texas airports bounced back with on-time flights in 2018. Looking at summer travel over a 10-year period, Texas' busiest airports hover just below 80 percent mark for on-time flights. Locally, DFW and Love Field clock in at 77.5 and 77.4 percent, respectively.
The study warns that June is historically the worst month for flight delays across the nation, and the other summer months aren't much better. But that isn't affecting Honolulu, where almost 90 percent of flights are on time this season — the best rate in the nation.
