Most delayed flights in America: SFO makes the list!

The US Department of Transportation released its monthly on-time statistics report this week, and September 07′ wasn’t so bad. While Nationwide statistics showed overall improvement for on-time performance compared to August 2007 and the September 2006, there were 5 flight routes that reported being late more than 85% of the time. One of those “top 5” is a flight that departs San Francisco. DOT considers a plane late when it arrives at its destination 15 minutes or more after the scheduled time.

Most Frequently Delayed Flights

Comair flight 5042 from Philadelphia to New York JFK – late 90.91 percent of the time!
Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight 4822 from Atlanta to Myrtle Beach, SC – late 89.66 percent of the time
Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight 4377 from Lafayette, LA to Atlanta – late 87.50 percent of the time
Atlantic Southeast Airlines flight 4423 from Atlanta to Lafayette, LA – late 87.50 percent of the time
Alaska Airlines flight 688 from San Francisco to Los Angeles – late 86.36 percent of the time

(Alaska Airlines has since dropped this evening flight from its schedule)


Back with the Friday Funny!
(click to enlarge)

Have a great weekend everyone

(Thanks Tommy) U.S Department of Transportation numbers show that airline on-time performance for the month of August was 71.7%.

More than 1 in 4 flights, on average, were delayed more than 15 minutes. Of the largest U.S carriers, United ranked the worst with only 66.2% of their planes arriving at the scheduled time.
August numbers, which are best described as “terrible”, are slightly better than the month of July at 69.8% – one of the worst since the government started keeping records in 1995.

Engine fire forces American Airlines plane into emergency landing

All passengers & cabin crew walked away uninjured.
Reuters is reporting an American Airlines flight from St Louis bound for Chicago was forced to turn around and return this afternoon after 1 of the 2 engines on the MD-80 aircraft caught fire. None of the 137 passengers or 5 crew were injured.

Separately, a Delta Airlines flight on Thursday aborted take-off when it was discovered that an engine on an Atlanta bound MD-88 plane was on fire. Everyone was evacuated without injury.

FAA Radar failure in Memphis, TN caused flight delays nationwide

Radar failure in Memphis for 2 hours temporarily caused nationwide delays and some cancellations through early afternoon. Air traffic controllers had to use cell phones to reroute some planes. Details here.