Sunday, May 18, 2008

Money & Business

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Avoid These Airports at All Costs

By Rick Newman

Posted 5/30/07

An airline is a peculiar business, because the fortunes of the company often run in inverse proportion to the well-being of the customers. Travelers love to pay fire-sale prices to fly on big planes with lots of empty seats. But that usually happens only when airlines have too many flights and are spiraling into financial turmoil. When the airlines are healthy, it's usually because their planes are flying nearly full, and they can command stiff prices for every cramped seat–which makes travelers grumpy.

Well don't look now, but after five major bankruptcies and billions of dollars in losses over the last six years, the nation's airlines are finally poised to earn a decent profit in 2007. And yes, travelers will feel the pinch. Carriers like Delta, United, American, and U.S. Airways have slashed the number of seats on overserved domestic routes, trimmed their fleets, and shifted many of their biggest planes to more profitable overseas destinations.

The upshot for fliers: It's going to be a bumpy summer travel season. "Last year was a tough one for the flying public," Marion Blakey, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, said recently. "This year is off to an equally tough start."

Actually, it's worse. The percentage of flights arriving on time has tumbled to 71 percent so far in 2007, the lowest level since the Department of Transportation starting tracking performance 20 years ago.

Planes are flying nearly as full as they ever have. And summer, the busiest travel season, is usually when traveler frustrations boil over. "The whole system is more vulnerable to shocks, and that could impact consumers," predicts Bill Warlick, an airline analyst at Fitch Ratings. "The passenger experience is going to be tested."

Where will the hassles be worst? To find out, U.S. News designed an exclusive Airport Misery Index that ranks airports according to a combination of on-time performance and load factor–the percentage of seats filled with passengers.

Using data from the Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics, we ranked 47 large airports and 53 regional airports to determine which have the best and worst combination of delayed planes and crowded flights. (View the methodology.) The lower the number, the better the airport. Here are the best and worst among the big airports where travelers are most likely to be stuck this summer: