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Newsroom
By Houston Business Journal
October 8, 2009
The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area has one of the better airline flight arrival and departure rates in the country, according to a new Brookings Institution report released Thursday.
The Washington D.C.-based institute’s “Expect Delays: An Analysis of Air Travel Trends in the United States” report found that 82.2 percent of airline flights to the Houston area in June arrived on time, a 4.5 percent improvement over June 2008.
The average delay in Houston in June was 58.9 minutes, 6.3 percent longer than in June the previous year.
The Brookings report is a first-of-its-kind analysis of air travel for metro areas, as opposed to individual airports. The Houston figures relate to both George Bush Intercontinental Airport and William P. Hobby Airport.
Nationwide, Brookings found that the number of airline flights landing at least two hours late more than doubled in the past two decades. The national average for all delayed arrivals in 2009 is nearly one hour.
Metropolitan areas experiencing longer-than-average delays for both arrivals and departures included New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island; Palm Bay-Melbourne-Titusville, Fla.; Portland-South Portland-Biddeford, Maine; Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington; and Columbia, S.C.
In contrast, Salt Lake City; Honolulu; San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.; Detroit-Warren-Livonia; and Riverside, Calif. were among the best with on-time arrival and departure rates better than the national average.
The report also ranks, for the first time, the nation’s largest metro-to-metro corridors.
The top corridors were those between Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach and New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, followed by Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont; and Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta and Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Miami Beach.
The route between the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington and Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown areas was ranked the No. 13 busiest in the nation with 2.9 million passengers as of March.
Following the Dallas area as the most popular destinations out of Houston were New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island; Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana; New Orleans-Metairie-Kenner; and Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta.
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