Shutdown: Airline Cancellations and Delays, Worst Airports

Over 2200 U.S. flights have been cancelled today, Sunday, and over 7700 have been delayed, adding to the misery for many passengers traveling this weekend. Over 1000 U.S. flights were cancelled Friday, and over 1500 were cancelled Saturday, with over 7000 daily flight delays for both days.

The FAA-mandated flight cancellations equate to a 4% reduction this weekend. It will increase to 6% by November 11, 8% by November 13, and up to 10% by November 14.

Usually American Airlines is one of the worst U.S. airlines in terms of operations, but at least for this past weekend, it was similar to United Airlines at cancelling 3% of its schedule, while Delta, usually known for better operations (at least prior to the Crowdstrike outage, where Delta performed much worse) cancelled an average of 7.7% of its scheduled flights over the past few days.

On the delayed flight front, JetBlue was worst, with over 35% of its flights delayed, but all of the major airlines, apart from Alaska Airlines, suffered delays in over a quarter of their flights.

Worst Airlines by Flight Cancellations, 11/7-11/9

Delta: 7.7%
JetBlue: 5%
American Airlines, Southwest and United Airlines: 3% (Tie)
Alaska: 2%

Worst Airlines by Flight Delays, 11/7-11/9

JetBlue: 35.3%
Southwest: 32.3%
United: 29.7%
American Airlines: 27%
Delta: 26%
Alaska: 16.7%

If you were flying from Newark EWR this weekend, chances are high that you suffered a delay, if not a cancelled flight. Newark had the highest percentage of flight cancellations, and Atlanta ATL, Washington National DCA, and New York LGA all had double-digit cancellations.

New York-area airports took three of the top four spots in terms of worst delays by departure airport, with Orlando MCO taking the third spot.

Worst Airports by Flight Cancellations, 11/7-11/9