The New List Of World's Best Airports For On-Time Travel

Last week’s snowy “bomb cyclone” caused airlines to cancel over 4,000 flights and snarling air traffic along the east coast for days. Meanwhile, on New Year’s Day, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s computer systems experienced a major glitch that delayed the processing of hundreds of thousands of arriving passengers across the country. In December, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport experienced a total power outage. British Airways experienced a worldwide IT outage in May that disrupted its operations for several days.

With everything that can, and often does, go wrong with air travel, it’s more important than ever for travelers to maintain control over the few factors that they can when it comes to planning their trip. One of those is deciding which airports to travel to, from and through.
Luckily, U.K.-based air travel information service OAG has released its new Punctuality Report for 2018 including intel on how airports are performing when it comes to getting flights in and out on time.

The study grouped airports into four categories. Mega airports were those handling 30 million or more departing flight seats last year. Major airports accommodated between 20-30 million annual outbound seats, while Large airports flew 10-20 million. Medium ones handled 5-10 million travelers, while small airports were those that saw 2.5-5 million seats departing per year.
According to OAG, in order to be considered, airlines and airports had to be able to provide data for at least 80% of all scheduled flights. Flights that arrived or departed within 14 minutes and 59 seconds of their scheduled times counted as achieving on-time performance (OTP), while cancelled flights were not taken into account.
Here were the top results in each category with corresponding percentages of flights with on-time performance in 2017 (see next page).
Mega Airports: 30+ Million Departing Seats Per Year
  1. Tokyo Haneda (HND) – 86.75%
  2. Madrid Barajas (MAD) – 83.63%
  3. Atlanta (ATL) – 82.38%
  4. Denver (DEN) – 82.24%
  5. Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW) – 81.36%
  6. Singapore Changi (SIN) – 80.57%
  7. Chicago O’Hare (ORD) – 79.85%
  8. Amsterdam (AMS) – 77.09%
  9. Frankfurt (FRA) – 76.35%
  10. London Heathrow (LHR) – 74.80%
  11. Los Angeles (LAX) – 74.66%
  12. Istanbul Ataturk (IST) – 73.86%
  13. New York (JFK) – 73.37%
  14. San Francisco (SFO) – 72.05%
  15. Paris (CDG) – 71.22%
  16. Bangkok (BKK) – 70.77%
  17. Dubai (DXB) – 70.19%
  18. Delhi (DEL) – 70.05%
  19. Hong Kong (HKG) – 67.92%
  20. Seoul Incheon (ICN) – 66.96%
According to OAG, the average on-time performance of these airports as 76.6%.
Major Airports: 20-30 Million Departing Seats Per Year
  1. Minneapolis St. Paul (MSP) – 85.72%
  2. Doha (DOH) – 85.41%
  3. Moscow Sheretyevo (SVO) – 83.55%
  4. Detroit (DTW) – 83.30%
  5. Phoenix (PHX) – 83.22%
  6. Houston (IAH) – 82.43%
  7. Tokyo Narita (NRT) – 81.83%
  8. Charlotte (CLT) – 81.79%
  9. Mexico City (MEX) – 80.87%
  10. Seattle (SEA) – 80.35%
  11. Sao Paulo Guarulhos (GRU) – 79.70%
  12. Miami (MIA) – 79.38%
  13. Melbourne (MEL) – 79.04%
  14. Las Vegas (LAS) – 78.38%
  15. Munich (MUC) – 78.36%
  16. Sydney (SYD) – 78.29%
  17. Orlando (MCO) – 78.27%
  18. Barcelona (BCN) – 77.47%
  19. Rome Fiumicino (FCO) – 75.98%
  20. Boston (BOS) – 74.19%
The average on-time performance in this category was 80.4%.
Among the top-performing airports in the Large category were Osaka, Salt Lake City, Sapporo, Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro. The top five in the Medium category were Birmingham, Panama City, Cologne-Bonn, Belo Horzonte and Stuttgart. Finally, the top Small airports were Tenerife North, Hannover, Stavanger, Durban and Anchorage.
Other U.S. airports with decent on-time records included Washington Dulles (81.79%), Portland, Oregon (81.62%), San Diego (80.91%), Baltimore-Washington (80.35%), Kansas City (82.54%), Santa Ana (82.13%), San Antonio (81.99%), Austin (81.57%), Indianapolis (81.13%), Anchorage (86.64%) and Omaha (83.55%).
What may be most surprising? That flight delays account for less than 20% of total traffic at many of the airports included in these findings. That’s despite a year in which there seemed to be story after story of air travel nightmares. Still, it helps keep things in perspective that most flights do depart and arrive on time, even between some of the world’s biggest airports. Perhaps that means more fliers will focus on the positive in the coming year…and use this information to plan their travel through airports with proven on-time records as another form of insurance against having their travel plans go awry.

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