It's tough at the top - OTP blog
Our latest OTP blog looks at the top-performing airports for September
At OAG we know it’s tough for airports to maintain good levels of on-time performance throughout the year, come rain or shine. This month we gathered on-time performance data for September 2014 for 739 airports around the world, including the largest airports in the world. These are the airports which have to handle the highest number of passengers as well as flight arrivals and departures.
For an airport such as Chicago O’Hare International Airport that meant an average of 2,341 flights a day in September, of which 75% departed or arrived on time.
American airports still dominate in a list of the world’s busiest airports with eight of the top 15 as measured by the number of flight arrivals and departures being located on US soil. While Chicago managed to get three out of four flights in or out on-time, the other seven US airports fared slightly better with on-time performance in a range of 81% to 85% in September.
Lone among the busiest 15 airports – but typical of many Japanese airports - Tokyo’s Haneda Airport achieved on-time performance in excess of 90%. Haneda was one of only two airports among these 15 which succeeded in handling more flights this September than last September while also improving their on-time performance; Los Angeles International Airport being the other. Generally, as the volume of traffic increases, airports struggle to maintain operational performance. Equally, when there’s a fall in traffic volumes, the pressure on airports eases and on-time performance can improve.
These pressures are very real at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport which handled a record number of scheduled flights in August, and nearly as many again in September when flights were up 8% on a year earlier, and the airport handled more flights than Paris Charles de Gaulle for the first time. In recent months, on-time performance at Istanbul has varied between 67% and 86% as the airport grapples with such rapid growth. With revenues related to flights, some may say it’s a nice problem to have.
- See more at: http://oag.com/OAG-Blog/its-tough-top#sthash.t7soGWIl.dpuf