The Airports With the Most Delays in the U.S.

07.02.2025 - 13:57 / afar.com / U.S.Airport / Sally France

In 2024, approximately 1 billion passengers departed from U.S. airports. Nearly a quarter of those travelers, about 236 million, experienced a flight delay or cancellation, according to a recent report from AirHelp, an air passenger rights company.

While one-in-four odds of experiencing a flight disruption may sound daunting, AirHelp’s deep dive into the data, which is showcased in its 2024 Disruption Report, offers helpful takeaways for travelers, including the most problematic months and the airports to avoid. Because history can sometimes repeat itself, such intel can be a helpful resource for travelers planning flights in 2025 and beyond.

“You can use this information to your advantage, particularly when choosing where to fly out of or—if you must—take a layover,” says Sally French, travel expert for personal finance company NerdWallet.

Here’s what else AirHelp’s recent report turned up, plus how travelers can make the most of the findings to avoid delays and travel disruptions in the future.

A regional hub, Aspen Airport, topped the list of 11 airports in AirHelp’s U.S. findings, which only include facilities that serve more than 100,000 passengers annually. In 2024, 36 percent of Aspen’s approximately 420,000 passengers were disrupted. Rutland-Southern Vermont Regional Airport came in second (33 percent), followed by Vero Beach, Florida (32 percent).

Four major metropolitan hubs also made the list: Dallas Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Charlotte. Of those, Dallas Fort Worth had the highest percentage of disruptions and ranked in fifth place overall, with 31 percent of passengers disrupted.

French points out that choosing a larger airport can be beneficial in avoiding—or minimizing—disruptions because smaller hubs have limited alternate routes in case of delays such as weather.

“Sometimes choosing larger airports is better,” French says, noting Aspen’s poor record. “For some travelers, it might make more sense to drive to Denver. Not only does that airport have more reliable service, but it also has so many more routes providing more options.”

The warm-weather months of July and May experienced the most disruptions in 2024, with 33 percent and 29 percent, respectively, of U.S. air travel passengers disrupted. January came in third, with 28 percent of passengers disrupted.

However, note that the CrowdStrike cyber outage, which caused thousands of delays and cancellations over several days in July 2024, played a key role in those numbers. The outage coincided with the peak of flight traffic for the year. Of the 96.6 million passengers who flew from a U.S. airport in July, 31.6 percent were affected by the Crowdstrike chaos and 64 percent of passengers on July 19, when the outage started,