Memorial Day weekend is kicking off what's expected to be a very busy air travel season, and many are wondering: is it going to be as bad as last summer?
During the summer of 2022 — the months stretching in between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day weekend — 2.1% of flights were canceled, and 22.9% had a delay of more than 15 minutes, according to data provided to Insider by flight tracking company FlightAware.
That's a minor increase compared to the summer of 2019 when 1.8% of the flights were canceled and 18.2% delayed, but the season was still perceived as a nightmare for air travel, with cancellations and delays peaking the Friday of Memorial Day weekend.
While it's hard to know how things are going to go in the coming months — delays are often linked to unpredictable factors like the weather — there are some airports that tend to be bad performers no matter the year, Kathleen Bangs, an aviation expert with FlightAware, told Insider.
"We have definitely seen the New York triad high on the list," she said. "It's a very, very busy, but tight geographic airspace, with Canada to the North and the Atlantic Ocean to the South, and a lot of European travel coming and blending in."
The Federal Aviation Administration has already predicted a 45% increase in delays in the New York region compared to last year and encouraged airlines to schedule fewer flights.
"Orlando always tends to be high on the list too," Bangs added. "And part of the reason is that a lot of families with children are traveling out of the Orlando airport, and you are going to have slower TSA lines as you move through hundreds of children."
Take a look at the 20 airports with the worst delays — calculated by the percentage of flights leaving the airport and arriving more than 15 minutes late to their destination — for the summer of 2022, ranked from best to worst: