The worst airports to fly out of during the holidays

Derek Miller
Updated

The possibility of bad weather combined with the huge number of passengers trying to get around makes the December holiday period one of the worst times of the year to be an airline passenger. If you are one of the many Americans who have tried to get home for the holidays and been thwarted by a delayed or canceled flight, you are not alone. Read on as we delve into the flight data from America's busiest airports to find the worst airports to fly out of during the holidays.

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In order to determine the worst airports for flying over the holidays, we looked at data for domestic flights which occurred during the month of December from 2012-2015. We examined the percentage of flights which were delayed, the average length of those delays and the percentage of flights which were canceled. We only considered airports which had at least 4,000 domestic flights during this time period. In order to understand where we got our data and how we put it together, read the full data and methodology below.

Key Findings

  • Watch out for the Great Lakes region – If you can, try and avoid the Great Lakes region during the holidays. Three out of the top 10 worst airports are located in this region.

  • Happy travels, Hawaii - Interestingly four of the top 10 best airports for flying over the holidays are in Hawaii. Do the airports in Hawaii have some sort of secret formula for smooth flying that they are keeping from the rest of the country? Probably not. The mild weather and lack of people making connections through Hawaii make it a breeze getting around. That's a formula other airports cannot copy.

  • Does weather matter? – You might expect the places known for the toughest, coldest, most snow-covered winters to be the worst to fly out of. But the data from the past few years doesn't entirely back that theory up. Half the airports in our top 10 are in mild weather states like Arkansas, Texas and California.

Data and Methodology

In order to conduct our analysis of the worst airports to fly out of over the holidays, we looked at data on all airports which had a minimum total of 4,000 domestic flights during the month of December from 2012-2015. This left us with 78 different cities and we ranked them according to these three metrics:

  • Flight cancellation rate. This is the percent of domestic flights which were canceled at each airport. Data comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

  • Flight delay rate. This is the percent of domestic flights which were delayed at each airport. Any flight which left later than the scheduled time was considered delayed. Data comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

  • Average delay time. This is the average length of time that domestic flights were delayed for. Data comes from the U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

After ranking each airport by each metric, we then averaged those rankings. We gave a half weight to flight delay rate and a full weight to flight cancelation rate and average delay time. After averaging, we assigned a score of 100 to the airport with the highest ranking and a score of 0 to the airport with the lowest ranking. In this case higher rankings mean an airport had longer delays, higher proportions of canceled flights and higher proportions of delayed flights.

Questions about our study? Contact us at press@smartasset.com.

Photo credit: ©iStock.com/samuelbrownNG

The post The Worst Airports to Fly out of During the Holidays appeared first on SmartAsset Blog.

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