Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and Delta Airlines bested competitors over the past year in several efficiency-related categories, according to a recent study analyzing data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Insurance Ranked found that Atlanta’s airport, along with Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, ranked highly among national counterparts in terms of flight arrivals and cancellations, generating some of the lowest percentages of canceled and delayed flights. The study examines data from the past five years, leading up to September of last year.
In 2022, Delta ranked first for delaying the fewest number of flights across the five largest airlines in the country. Just 16% of Delta’s flights were delayed, with the bureau defining a delay as a flight that takes off or lands 15 or more minutes past its originally scheduled departure or arrival time.
Over the past five years, however, Delta came in second to Hawaiian Airlines for the same metric, the Honolulu-based airline boasting an average delay percentage of 10.2% from 2017 to 2022. The study partly credits Delta’s second-place ranking to the staff shortage fiasco of last June that resulted in widespread delays and cancellations affecting airlines across the board. Delta still fared well against competitors, canceling just under 4% of its flights for the month while delaying 19%. In comparison, American Airlines canceled more than 6% of its flights and delayed nearly 30%.
As for airports, Hartsfield-Jackson ranked first among 792 airports around the country in terms of traffic, the airport seeing a combined 64 million arriving and departing passengers year-over-year in 2021, according to BTS data. The airport witnessed an additional 8 million arrivals and 8 million departures in 2022, a 25% increase in both categories.
Atlanta’s airport also claimed the top spot for having the highest percentage of on-time arriving and departing flights, for both the year-over-year 2022 estimate and the five-year average. Just under 13% of Hartsfield-Jackson’s flights were delayed since 2017, while 1.5% were canceled. Charlotte, North Carolina’s airport, Charlotte Douglas International, ranked second, followed by the airports in Seattle and Denver.