Airports Airlines To Avoid

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I never tell business travelers not to fly, because only you know what is essential to your business. But I feel compelled to tell you this: I’ve just informed my own clients that I’m not flying anymore this summer, except in extraordinary and absolutely unavoidable circumstances.

The reasons I’m redlining the summer are obvious: Record flight delays and cancellations. Record amounts of lost or misplaced luggage. Passengers held hostage for hours on runways on cramped, ill-provisioned flights. Business travelers diverted to small airports in tertiary cites and then abandoned as their aircraft flies away empty. Flights across the Atlantic on planes with malfunctioning toilets that spew sewage down the aisles.

I’m no wimp. Three decades of business travel has made me tough and cynical and stoic about the road. But I’m not stupid either. I can do the math: Flying this summer simply isn’t an efficient or cost-effective use of my time or my clients’ money.

But if you must fly this summer, I suggest that you do your best to avoid these guaranteed time-wasting, angst-inducing black holes.

American Airlines Hub at Dallas/Fort Worth
When you combine the on-time, canceled-flight, and mishandled-baggage statistics churned out each month by the Department of Transportation, American Airlines and its commuter carriers are arguably the nation’s least-reliable way to fly. And its huge hub at sprawling Dallas/Fort Worth has the most problems. On some days in June, the airline canceled as many as a third of its D.F.W. departures, according to flight-information site FlightStats.com. Even factoring in the brutal early-summer storms that have hit northern Texas, American Airlines’ cancellations are excessive. Avoid changing planes there.

Northwest Airlines During the Last 10 Days of the Month
Northwest is trying to operate with about 25 percent fewer pilots and co-pilots than it employed in 2000. The inevitable result: massive crew shortages at the end of June when Northwest’s remaining pilots “timed out” and could no longer fly. (According to federal regulations, pilots cannot fly more than 100 hours a month.) Northwest canceled more than 1,200 flights during the last 10 days of June. The final 10 days of July and August won’t be much better.

Continental Hub at Newark Liberty Airport
Continental Airlines is probably running less erratically than any of the six large-network traditional carriers. But its hub at Newark Airport is the most dreadfully overburdened facility in the dreadfully overburdened Northeast Corridor. For the first five months of the year, in fact, government statistics show that Newark experienced more delays than any other airport in the United States. Alternatives? Well, none, since New York’s Kennedy and LaGuardia airports are almost as bad as Newark Liberty.

Delta Hub at Kennedy Airport
Speaking of bad, Delta recently launched a breakneck international expansion at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport. It now flies to dozens of cities in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The problem? Its two terminals at J.F.K. are shoddy and shambolic. About half of its flights run late, according to the government. And its commuter carriers, which bring in connecting international travelers from around the East Coast, run late or not at all. (By the way, J.F.K.’s other big carriers, American Airlines and JetBlue Airways, aren’t models of efficiency either.)

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