NYC’s airports are, well, anything but perfect. Unfortunately for us they’re often given some pretty negative titles–JFK alone was named among the most stressful airports in the world, one of the worst airports in the world for 2022 travel, and the worst in the world for summer cancellations.
And once again JFK has been hit with another title that’s less than ideal.
According to a new study done by travel information website Places to Travel, NYC’s JFK Airport is one of the worst in the US for delays.
The travel site looked at data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics for almost 2 million delayed flights across the US–between January 2023 and February 2024–to see which airport featured the longest average delay per flight. Flights were then grouped by arrival airport and the average delay per flight was found.
Unfortunately, JFK Airport found itself at the top ten. With the average late flight being delayed by 1 hour, 24 minutes, and 3 seconds, the airport landed itself in sixth place.
If you’re trying to be an optimist it could be worse–Provo Airport in Utah took the top spot on the list with an average late flight delay of 1 hour, 42 minutes, and 31 seconds.
Though, when you really think about it, that’s not that much worse than JFK’s delay time. And, of course, we’d rather no delay at all.
In fact, a study back in 2022 found that 24.08% of JFK’s flights saw delays in that year–not exactly something a traveler wants to hear.
On the bright side, JFK does actually have some positives to it–its TWA Hotel was recently awarded the best airport hotel in North America and its new $4.2 billion Terminal 6 is expected to open by 2026. It even could potentially look pretty futuristic by 2050!
But what we will say is if you’re flying out of JFK maybe you don’t always have to show up for your flight 5 hours in advance.
Jason Wilson, CEO of Places to Travel, commented on the findings, saying:
Interestingly, the data doesn’t show a clear trend with regard to the size of airports…However, the findings do still show that a massive number of flights are delayed, resulting in traveler stress and potential missed connections, among other consequences, and the air travel infrastructure needs to urgently adapt to handle the massive volumes of passengers to rectify this.