Travel News

America’s Most Delayed Airports & Flights: Why Newark?

Locations in this article:  Athens, Greece Chicago, IL Dallas, TX Los Angeles, CA Madrid, Spain

You may have seen Peter Greenberg’s CBS Early Show report on the most delayed airport or read Scott McCartney’s Wall Street Journal article, now Peter and Scott join forces to figure out why Newark has chronically delayed fights.

Leaving no stone in the travel industry unturned, their debate continues with FAA reimbursements and federal airline subsidies for small airports.

Peter Greenberg: What is the worst airport for delays in America?

Scott McCartney: Newark, New Jersey.

PG: I thought it was going to be LaGuardia, but Newark won.

SM: I was surprised, too. Of the New York airports, Newark really has the best chance of operating well, and yet it’s been horrible. Of the worst flights in the country, the top 140 of them either started or ended at Newark. They have a very high percentage of the countries delayed flight

All kinds of problems there: getting in, getting out, airline scheduling issues, air traffic control issues. The system ought to be operating pretty darn well: airline capacity is down, except for the terrible blizzards we had in the winter weather has been pretty good for flying. Where’s the problem? Things ought to be gong well.

PG: They should be. The basic suicidal scheduling of the airlines is partially to blame. I looked at some numbers. Every airline, within the airlines themselves, they have nicknames for some of their most dreaded flights.

Nighttime Los Angeles with crowded freewaysThere was a flight from Washington D.C. to L.A. on United. It started with an 8 because they called it LATE41. TWA had a flight from New York to L.A. and they used to call it LATE49. The plane started in either Madrid or Athens and was always late to New York and then of course was always late from New York to L.A. and so on. One of the flights you found was an American Airlines flight from Newark to Chicago. I don’t think that flight’s been on time since 1947.

SM: No, probably not. It gets more difficult to tell a flight’s record, but the government is cracking down. Airlines used to be able to wipe out bad records by changing the flight number. Now, they are required to start reporting flights together even if the flight number changes as long as the departure time is within thirty minutes.

There’s a lot of shucking and jiving in schedules. Southwest had some flights that were in the top ten worst flights. They had one flight from Dallas to Kansas City––not exactly a congested mess of airspace out there––and the poor flight, it was the end of the day and every time they tried to reschedule it, they ended up messing up that particular aircraft run even more. Sometimes, airlines jam flights into crowded airports at 5pm because that’s when people want to go.

PG: If you can get out on a flight in the morning between 6am and 7am, you’ve got a halfway decent chance of getting where you want to go.

Sun rising under wing of airplaneSM: Yeah more than a halfway decent chance. Airlines really try to push the early morning flights out as fast as they can. There’s a major effort to get those flights out on time. Statistically, if a flight leaves on time on the first leg of the day, that flight has a much better chance of making it through the day relatively on time.

PG: I got an email from one a listener I’m going to share with you. She writes, “I am the supposed beneficiary of a tax refund for flights booked prior to the FAA shutdown and flown during it. How do I go about collecting the taxes that were paid by me, but not sent on to the government?” What do you think Scott?

SM: “Supposed” is the key word here. There was back and forth finger-pointing. The airline said contact the IRS if you want a refund. The IRS said that’s not right, contact the airline.

If your listener bought the ticket while the tax was still in effect but at least one of her flights was flown when the tax wasn’t in effect, she is entitled to a refund on that fight. The best advice right now is contact the airline. They have put procedures in place to offer refunds, but the reality is there are very few refunds to be had. The legislation is not favorable for travelers and it is going to be difficult to make any meaningful refunds happen.

Learn more about what happened: FAA Shutdown Ends, Airline Tax Holiday Over

PG: Let’s run the numbers. You’re dealing with a 7.5 percent federal excise tax, by the time she finishes all of her efforts of e-mail writing, postage, and phone calls she’d be better going out and getting it supersized.

SM: That’s probably true. And the taxes can add up. Not all the taxes were not in effect. You’re not going to get a refund on your airport passenger facility charge.

Federal Aviation Administration Logo / FAA LogoPG: One of the other ancillary byproducts is that the FAA deal shut down service to a number of smaller airports. It goes back to the issue that was being raised in Congress about how much we’re subsidizing some small airports in the United States. I guess the real question is how much is service to small cities at risk?

SM: I think service to small cities is at risk. I think Congress is going to get out of this business. It’s hard to argue that we still need this. The essential air service program was put in place when the industry was deregulated. If you had airline service in 1978 then you were grandfathered in. It hasn’t been changed since then. There are probably lots of communities that really can’t support any kind of air service. There are lots of communities that probably need subsidized air service right now, but they’re not eligible because they didn’t have it in 1978.

Delta’s already announced it’s going to pull out of some small markets. It may be a negotiating ploy to up the subsidy from the government because they’re losing money on these flights. There’s a lot of sentiment in Congress that we’re beyond this position. Thief River Falls, Minnesota operates with a subsidy. They’re losing money––there’s a 12% load factor.

With FedEx, UPS and the Postal Service, there are a lot of ways to get things in and out of small towns. Most of the people in the small towns are probably driving to bigger airports to get cheaper fares. Do you really need to subsidize that turboprop that’s going in there once a day? This is air service that’s not economically working. It’s subsidized because of this fear in 1978 that airlines weren’t going to serve small towns.

PG: The bottom line is they’re not serving small towns.

SM: There are different ways that markets can serve small towns. Allegiant is a great example. There’s no reason you have to provide daily service to a small town, but big airlines think they do. Go in once a week. That helps.

By Peter Greenberg for PeterGreenberg.com.

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