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Airport Sees More On-Time Flights

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By TED JACKOVICS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 4, 2008

TAMPA - Despite five chronically late flights serving Tampa International Airport in July, on-time arrival and departure performance improved compared with a year ago, according to a U.S. Department of Transportation report issued Wednesday.

On-time arrival performance also improved nationwide, with three out of four flights arriving within 15 minutes of schedule in July, the department reported.

Salt Lake City; Oakland, Calif.; and Chicago's Midway Airport were the top U.S. airports in on-time arrivals, and New York's three major airports - Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark in New Jersey - ranked the lowest.

Tampa International posted a 76.2 percent on-time arrivals rate in July - 17th best nationwide - exceeding the national average of 75.7 percent.

That was a 6.6-percentage-point improvement in Tampa, compared with a 5.9-percentage-point increase in performance nationwide.

On-time arrivals in Tampa generally depend on conditions at the departure airport and en-route weather, unlike New York, where crowded airspace can tie up arrivals and delay departures. But frequent summer thunderstorms in the Tampa Bay area can create additional problems for air traffic controllers.

Tampa ranked 16th nationwide in departure performance, with 77.3 percent of flights leaving on time, 3.8 percentage points better than a year ago.

However, five inbound and outbound flights serving Tampa arrived more than 15 minutes late either here or at their destination 80 percent of the time in July:

•Comair Flight 5438 to New York's LaGuardia, which arrived 62 minutes late on average.

•JetBlue Flight 28 to New York's Kennedy, which averaged 93 minutes late.

•American Airlines Flight 1523 to Dallas-Fort Worth, which averaged 37 minutes late.

•Delta Air Lines Flight 696 from Atlanta, which averaged 51 minutes late.

•Comair Flight 5215 from Boston, which averaged 46 minutes late.

Four flights bound for Tampa in July from New York area airports stranded passengers inside airliners for more than three hours before taking off, but no "taxi-out" delays of more than three hours were reported for Tampa departures.

Reporter Ted Jackovics can be reached at tjackovics@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7817.

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