Mar. 2—COLONIE — Commercial passenger flights into Albany International Airport fall behind schedule at a higher rate than the national average for airports across the U.S., according to a Times Union analysis of federal flight data going back five years.
The data, compiled by the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics, shows that slightly more than 77 percent of the flights at Albany are on-time, which means nearly 23 percent of the flights were late.
Commercial passenger flights are considered on-time if they arrive at the gate within 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival time.
The five-year snapshot used in this analysis begins November 2019 and ends November 2024, the most recent month data is publicly available.
The airport's on-time numbers are not dramatically lower than most of its peers. For instance, Rochester's airport led the state's six busiest airports in on-time flights at 78.93 percent. Still, Albany's performance falls short of the national on-time average of 79.5 percent.
The Times Union examined the number of delayed flights in Albany and what caused them after Allegiant Air, one of several low-cost carriers that fly out of Albany, experienced an epic scheduling and logistics meltdown on Presidents Day, Feb. 17.
An Allegiant plane full of passengers bound for the Fort Myers area that Monday sat on the tarmac for six hours before the flight was ultimately canceled after more than a 10-hour delay.
Allegiant and airport officials said a perfect storm of difficult weather, several power outages, and challenging staffing and logistical issues left the passengers stranded on the tarmac for hours on end.
And it wasn't just Allegiant that was impacted. Flights on other airlines were also delayed, although passengers said there was very little communication about what was going on, causing more frustration.
That included Diana Martin, a Niskayuna resident who works for a major nonprofit in Washington, D.C., and was delayed on her JetBlue flight to work that Monday. Martin travels frequently for work and says she tries to avoid early morning and holiday flights at Albany knowing that is when delays are most likely to happen.
She said that flying these days is too expensive for there not to be reliable service, especially at an airport like Albany that is so convenient to get to and navigate. She thinks there has been too much emphasis on attracting the discount airlines that serve vacationers and snowbirds, but not enough is done for business travelers.
"We're a bigger market, and we need to be able to rely on the airport for transportation and access (to other cities)," Martin said. "The problem with Albany is that there aren't enough gates. It's about adding more staffing, more gates."
Allegiant operates out of just one gate at Albany, and the airline had a handful of aircraft land in Albany that day, leading the airport to scramble to make available other gates for passengers to deplane.
Two of the Allegiant airplanes also had identical flight numbers at one point, which created more confusion, Albany airport officials said, although Allegiant would not confirm that detail.
A Times Union review of publicly available flight maps of the aircraft that flew in and out of Albany before and after the holiday provides a glimpse into the chaotic mess scene airport workers and passengers ultimately endured over several days.
The embarrassing incident comes as the airport, overseen by the Albany County Airport Authority, is undergoing a $100 million expansion.
The airport authority and its board of directors are also just emerging from a messy leadership change in which its former CEO was fired and its chief financial officer resigned.
According to flight data sets available through Flightradar24, an aviation data service, an Allegiant flight between St. Pete — Clearwater International Airport and Albany on Feb. 16 was diverted to Allentown, Pa., but only after having circled Albany airspace for about 45 minutes.
The same Airbus A320 eventually flew on to Albany, landing at 12:21 a.m. that Monday, according to Flightradar24.
Allegiant's director of corporate communications Sonya Padgett told the Times Union in an email the airline is investigating the incident so "something like this never happens again."
Passengers that were "impacted by delays that occurred" on Feb. 17 received vouchers and credits for future flights on the airline, Padgett said. And "additional cash compensation" was given, too.
Padgett said that many of the problems originated in air traffic control operations in Florida that, combined with the winter weather, caused many delays in departures that day out of Albany. Each time there was a power outage, the gate staff had to switch to "manual check-in and boarding processes," Padgett said.
"Those delays meant that arriving flights had to wait for available gate access," Padgett said. "We then faced staffing issues when the delays caused crew members to time out."
In general, the busiest airports are not often the best at avoiding delays. Atlanta, the busiest airport in the U.S., had a 78.68 percent on-time rate in 2023. There are 14 major airports with better numbers.
Albany International Airport had roughly 1.4 million passenger "enplanements," or passengers boarding flights, out of Albany in 2023, a number that is trending toward 1.5 million a year. The number of people that come through the airport should be double that number since enplanements are only counted when a passenger boards a flight leaving the airport.
Albany is not among the 30 airports with the most traffic, but it is within the top 90 in the country in terms of passenger traffic and it is growing.
The best-performing airport in the U.S. is Minneapolis — Saint Paul International Airport, which handled 18 million passengers in 2023, with 83 percent of its flights on time. Salt Lake City's airport, with 12 million passengers in 2023, also reached an 83 percent on-time rate in 2023, the most recent year in which 12 months of data are available.
Although airport officials in Albany argue that the difference between on-time percentages at Albany and other airports is statistically negligible and likely impossible for an average flyer to discern from experiences at other airports with slightly fewer flight delays.
Albany also has a higher percentage of flight delays that were determined to have been a result of something within the airline's control, such as gate or crew staffing, aircraft maintenance or cleaning, fueling or not loading baggage quickly enough.
At Albany, 8.36 percent of the delays are caused by the air carrier. Among the largest airports in New York, only Buffalo has a higher rate of airline-caused delays.
"We have a great relationship with our airline partners here at Albany International Airport," airport spokesman Steve Smith told the Times Union. "And we're always working together to ensure that the nearly three million air travelers from the Capital Region and beyond have a positive experience."
Some travelers, especially people who frequently travel for work, question whether the airport's efforts to recruit new low-fare airlines serving sunny vacation destinations have led to more delays over the years.
That is true to a degree when it comes to two discount carriers, Southwest and JetBlue airlines, the data shows. Only 73 percent of Southwest's flights in and out of Albany have been on time over the past five years, and JetBlue's numbers are worse, with just 67.89 percent of the time.
Any delays at Albany by Southwest have an outsized impact on the airport's overall on-time numbers because Southwest operates a third of the flights at Albany. The airline started service out of Albany in 2000.
Chris Perry, a spokesperson for Southwest, said the airline's on-time rates were negatively impacted by its December 2022 scheduling crisis that led to 15,000 flights being canceled at the height of the holiday season. Southwest paid $600 million back to customers and paid a $140 million fine to the federal government.
Southwest has since improved its service, which could lead to better on-time data at Albany given Southwest's outsized presence.
"We've since made numerous operational enhancements, and in 2024 had the lowest percentage of canceled flights among all U.S. airlines and were fourth overall with on-time performance around 78 percent," Perry said, referring to the airline's national figures, also available through the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Southwest's on-time flight rate increased dramatically at Albany over the second half of 2024, rising to 84.51 percent last November, according to the bureau.
That was only surpassed by Allegiant, which posted an on-time rate of 88.64 percent at Albany during the same month, a period when the national average was 84.87 percent.
JetBlue says it is also working hard to reduce delays, partially by scaling back flights and adding more time between landings and takeoffs.
"At JetBlue, we remain focused on reliability through our multi-year JetForward strategy, which includes careful planning and day-of operations management," a company spokesman told the Times Union. "Recently, we've adopted a more conservative schedule, adding buffer time for maintenance and crew resilience to better recover from (air traffic control) delays."
JetBlue also had extremely good on-time numbers at Albany during November, reaching 81.63 percent.
Avelo, another low-cost carrier that began flights between Albany and North Carolina in November, could not be included in the analysis.
Another discount airline, Breeze, is scheduled to start service between Albany and Florida and the Carolinas this summer, becoming the eighth airline to serve the Capital Region.
John Grant, an aviation expert based in the United Kingdom with OAG Aviation Worldwide, says on-time performance is critical to both the airlines and the airports where they operate.
"I don't believe that low-cost carriers are specifically worse than legacy carriers," Grant said, referring to national data. "In fact, in January Southwest had an 81.64 percent (on-time rate), second only to Hawaiian Airlines and ahead of the legacy carriers."
Grant added that Spirit Airlines, another discount airline, had a 79.82 percent on-time rate, also beating out legacy airlines.
"It is, of course, the airlines issue rather than the airports, but most airports take a proactive approach to this data point since it reflects on the perception amongst travelers," Grant said. "No airline wants to be late, it costs money."
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