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Airport Hell: New York's An Awful Place to Fly

New York magazine reports this week from the front lines of US airport gridlock: the Big Apple. While it may not seem that delays and schedule snafus at LGA, JFK and EWR could hobble your flight out of Phoenix, the fact that New York-area airports handle so much traffic means they can quickly turn a good day in the air bad:

Close to 3,700 flights stream through [New York's] three airports daily. And our sluggishness infects the entire grid. "If you look at the delay signature in New York and on the national level, you can see it propagating delays into the national system," says John Hansman, an MIT scientist who studies air-traffic patterns.

And while New York mentions a number solutions--capping the number of planes, expanding Stewart International, airspace redesigns--the magazine doesn't report if or when any of them are likely to happen:

It's anyone's guess as to whether caps--or any proposed solution--will be implemented now, later, or never.

Fortunately, in a massive feat of data mining, New York does offer some help in another article. The staff plugged multiple routes and options into Flightstats to find the best--and worst--options for transcon, trans-Atlantic and Eastern Seaboard flights. They advocate for shuttle flights out of LGA to Boston, Virgin America to LAX and L'Avion to Paris. These flights aren't guaranteed to arrive stress-free, but when flying from New York these days, you need all the help you can get.

Related Stories:
· Gridlock at 30,000 Feet [NYM]
· Choosing Well [NYM]
· Airport Hell coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Ho-Yeol Ryu, via NYM]