This Tuesday in the Delta Airlines Sky Lounge at JFK International in New York there was a guy from London who was two days off his Louisville bound travel schedule because Delta had canceled flights. A young woman in her twenties, standing in line with me to find out why my flight was now three hours late to Boston, said I shouldn’t feel bad: her flight was supposed to leave a day ago to Raleigh.
Chalk it up to bad weather or — as George Carlin once said, “broken planes” – still, our airports are some of the best in the world for getting their passengers out on time.
According to travel industry monitor, FlightStats, Chinese airports are the worst.
The FlightStats figures showed that in June 2013, out of a worldwide analysis, Beijing and Shanghai airports came in last for on-time arrivals and departures. They had by far the worst record for on-time flights – 18.3% and 28.7% respectively leaving those busy airports on schedule.
FlightStats came out with their report two weeks ago, but being stuck in JFK for three hours, and listening to people stuck because of delayed Delta flights , had me thinking twice about the reliability of U.S. airports. Truth is, they are not as bad as Americans tend to believe. And despite all the billions of dollars spent on new and modern airports in China, the air traffic controllers cannot get their planes in the air on time.
Chinese airline performance makes Delta look like the best airline in the world. China United Airlines had just 27% of its flights arriving on time. Large national carriers like Air China and China Southern also reported massive delays along those same lines. Mainland experts attribute the problem to excessive military control of the airspace and poor urban planning, the South China Morning Post reported on July 12.
“Nearly 80% of China’s airspace has been reserved for military use. In other countries, such as the U.S., the situation is exactly the opposite,” a senior executive of Hainan Airlines Hainan Airlines said.
Jan. 4, 2013, fog delay at China’s Kunming Changshui International Airport.
At least 42% of flights from Beijing get delayed by 45 minutes or more while Shanghai International had just 24% of its flights departing on time last month, compared with a 38.9% on-time departure rate six months ago.
Although Beijing has tried to solve the delay problem for years, little has been achieved, South China Morning Post reported. Delays often trigger violent protests at airports. One made the rounds on YouTube, of course, when security cams caught one man slamming the living daylights out of a poor check in receptionists computer terminals. In recent months, there have been frequent reports of angry passengers smashing airline counters and attacking ground staff in an outbursts of anger. Many have given up flying and have moved to high-speed rail where possible.
The top 10 performing major international airlines and their on-time percentages included in descending order:
Iberia Airlines: 85.70%
Korean Air Lines: 86.80%
EasyJet: 87.20%
KLM: 89.70%
Tyrolean Airways: 90.27%
Finnair: 90.34%
Japan Airlines: 91.29%
ANA: 91.42%
Gulf Air: 92.06%
South African: 93.33%
Top performing North American airports included Honolulu (86.29%), Vancouver (86.18%) and Salt Lake City (85.55%). Top performing large European airports were in Amsterdam (83.52%), Munich (83.35%) and Vienna (82.15%).