Thanksgiving travelers get ready for takeoff
Passengers line up Wednesday to check in at Terminal One at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport. The day before Thanksgiving is traditionally one of the busiest travel days in the U.S. Check your flight status at SunSentinel.com/flighttracker. Also, see which airports are most likely to delay your flight in Money,
With U.S. travelers flying in droves this holiday season, one frequent traveler decided to figure out which airports produced the highest likelihood of flight delays — so he could avoid them.
Travel blogger Asher Fergusson created a “delay index” for the 25 heaviestused U.S. airports, incorporating average taxi-in and taxi-out times of flights, average waits in customs and security, average delays for departures and arrivals, percentage of canceled flights, and percentage of on-time departures.
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport ranked in the middle of the pack, as the 12th worst for delays.
Working against the airport: Just 77 percent of departures were on time, which was better than only five airports and tied the airport with the largest overall delay index: John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Also, FLL was rated fifthworse than average in customs and security waits, at 18 minutes, 68 seconds.
Working in FLL’s favor: Loaded planes at the airport taxi in and out at comparatively quick rates, according to the index.
Planes at only six other airports had faster average taxi-out times than FLL at 16.9 minutes, and planes at only nine other airports taxied to arrival gates faster than the average 7.4 minutes at FLL.
Miami International Airport earned the fifthworst overall delay index, and Orlando International Airport was seventh worst. Customs and security wait times were long at both airports, while percentage of on-time departures were lower than most of the other ranked airports.
Palm Beach International Airport was not included in the index.
Here are the 25 mostdelayed airports and their “delay indexes”:
1. John F. Kennedy, New York City, 588.99
2. Newark Liberty, Newark, N.J., 588.32
3. LaGuardia, New York City, 539.75
4. O’Hare, Chicago,
530.54
5. Miami International, 523.19
6. San Francisco 519.06
7. Orlando 517.81
8. Logan International, Boston, 513.55
9. Philadelphia International, 499.29
10. George Bush Intercontinental, Houston, 497.42
11. Dallas-Fort Worth International, 490.70
12. Fort LauderdaleHollywood, 488.71
13. Reagan National, Arlington, Va., 483.15
14. Charlotte Douglas, Charlotte, N.C., 471.94
15. Los Angeles International, 467.95
16. Detroit 464.54
17. Denver 434.67
18. Minneapolis/St. Paul International, 416
19. McCarran International, Las Vegas, Nev., 415.81
20. Atlanta 414.05
21. Baltimore-Washington International, 401.98
22. Seattle-Tacoma International, 394.72
23. Chicago Midway, 382.58
24. Salt Lake City International, Salt Lake City, Utah, 378.04
25. Phoenix Sky Harbor International, Phoenix, Ariz., 364.36 International, International, Metropolitan, International, International,