RANKED: Here's Which Airlines Are Most Likely To Be Delayed The Day Before Thanksgiving
REUTERS/Jana Asenbrennerova
Traveling at Thanksgiving is often frustrating, and 2013 is poised to be especially terrible, with awful weather all along the East Coast.
Using Bureau of Transportation Statistics data, we ranked 15 of the largest U.S. airlines by how many of their day-before-Thanksgiving flights arrived late over the years 2008-2012, as a percent of all flights by each carrier. We also include the average delays for those late flights.
#1. JetBluePercent late: 22.1%
Average delay: 54 minutes
Percent late: 18.5%
Average delay: 59 minutes
#3. American EaglePercent late: 18.4%
Average delay: 66 minutes
#4. ExpressJetPercent late: 17.9%
Average delay: 59 minutes
#5. Southwest AirlinesPercent late: 17.0%
Average delay: 57 minutes
#6. AirTranPercent late: 16.5%
Average delay: 45 minutes
Percent late: 16.5%
Average delay: 56 minutes
#8. US AirwaysPercent late: 14.9%
Average delay: 39 minutes
#9. Delta Air LinesPercent late: 14.7%
Average delay: 42 minutes
#10. Virgin America*Percent late: 14.2%
Average delay: 32 minutes
#11. American AirlinesPercent late: 14.2%
Average delay: 51 minutes
Percent late: 14.1%
Average delay: 45 minutes
#13. Mesa AirlinesPercent late: 12.9%
Average delay: 49 minutes
#14. United AirlinesPercent late: 11.6%
Average delay: 49 minutes
#15. Hawaiian AirlinesPercent late: 7.6%
Average delay: 91 minutes**
*BTS data only available for 2012.
** 2012 was a crazy outlier for Hawaiian - only 9 out of 200 flights were late, but the average delay among those 9 flights was about five hours. For the other four years, the average delay was about 39 minutes.