Metro areas
Which airport should you fly from?
Where a metro area has several airports, the one you pick changes your odds of arriving on time. 8 metro areas with 21 airports, compared on 7,236,355 departures, July 2023 – July 2026: on-time arrival, cancellations, taxi time and time of day, with a lead called only when it is larger than chance.
Leave the destination empty for the metro area’s overall comparison, or enter an airport code to compare the routes each airport flies there.
What stands out across the metro areas
Each line compares the metro areas with one another, from the same figures as the pages below.
- Where it mattersThe airport you choose matters most in San Francisco, where on-time arrival runs from 78.7% at SFO to 84.1% at SJC (5.4 points), and least in Miami, where MIA at 73.2% and FLL at 72.6% are 0.6 points apart, a gap that is larger than chance but small.
- The busiest airportIn 5 of 8 metro areas the airport with the most departures also has the lowest on-time arrival rate (ORD, DFW, LAX, SFO, and IAH), and in 7 it also has the longest taxi-out. The exceptions on on-time arrival are New York (LGA is the busiest, JFK the slowest), Washington (DCA is the busiest, BWI the slowest), and Miami (MIA is the busiest, FLL the slowest).
- CancellationsCancellations differ most in Washington: DCA cancelled 2.95% of its flights and IAD 1.31%, 2.3 times as many.
- Taxi timeTaxi-out differs most in Chicago: 25.5 min at ORD against 14.4 min at MDW, 11.0 minutes more before each departure.
- One airlineAt 12 of the 21 airports one carrier flies more than half of the departures: Southwest Airlines at DAL (97%), Southwest Airlines at HOU (92%), Southwest Airlines at MDW (92%), and Southwest Airlines at OAK (86%), and 8 more. Comparing those airports is partly comparing airlines.
Every metro area
Open a metro area for its airports side by side, by time of day, by hour, and for any destination you choose.
| Metro area | Departures | Best on time | Lowest on time | Gap (points) | Fewest cancellations | Taxi-out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York LGA, EWR, JFK | 1,195,723 | LGA 78.3% | JFK 77.0% | 1.3 | JFK 2.51% | 24.5 to 27.3 min |
| Chicago ORD, MDW | 1,193,287 | MDW 76.4% | ORD 74.5% | 1.9 | MDW 1.24% | 14.4 to 25.5 min |
| Dallas–Fort Worth DFW, DAL | 1,185,765 | DAL 76.0% | DFW 73.1% | 2.9 | DAL 1.22% | 13.0 to 19.6 min |
| Los Angeles LAX, SNA, BUR, ONT | 906,104 | ONT 83.5% | LAX 81.4% | 2.1 | LAX 0.78% | 13.6 to 18.1 min |
| Washington DCA, BWI, IAD | 904,462 | IAD 81.0% | BWI 76.0% | 5.0 | IAD 1.31% | 15.2 to 21.6 min |
| San Francisco SFO, SJC, OAK | 700,180 | SJC 84.1% | SFO 78.7% | 5.4 | SJC 0.66% | 12.7 to 21.0 min |
| Miami MIA, FLL | 619,160 | MIA 73.2% | FLL 72.6% | 0.6 | MIA 1.49% | 17.8 to 21.3 min |
| Houston IAH, HOU | 531,674 | HOU 78.8% | IAH 77.4% | 1.4 | HOU 1.05% | 12.7 to 20.1 min |
Best and lowest on time are the airports with the highest and lowest on-time arrival rate in the metro area; the gap is the difference in points. Taxi-out runs from the airport with the shortest to the one with the longest.
How much the choice moves on-time arrival
Best minus worst on-time arrival among each metro area's airports, in percentage points.
Read the figures, not the bar lengths: the bars start below the smallest gap so small differences are visible. Every gap on this page is larger than chance at these flight counts, which is not the same as large. 2 of the 8 are 3 points or more.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Departing flights. Where an airport’s gap to the best is within chance, its metro page says so.
How this was worked out
What counts as a metro area, and what a lead means.
- Metro areas are the DOT’s own city markets, the grouping the department uses for flights between cities, which puts Newark with New York and Baltimore with Washington. A market gets a page when at least 2 of its airports are ones FlyerIntel covers with a full profile. The list is read from the database, not typed in: 8 markets qualify today, with 21 airports between them. Airports in a market that FlyerIntel does not cover are not compared.
- Every figure is for flights departing the airport, July 2023 – July 2026, from the same aggregates as the airport pages. On-time arrival is a flight landing within 15 minutes of schedule, counted at the destination.
- A lead is called a lead only when it is bigger than chance. Each rate is tested with a two-proportion test on its flight count (about 95% confidence), the test the compare tool uses. A gap can be larger than chance and still too small to matter, and the text says so when it is under a point. The test treats flights as independent, which they are not (a storm cancels many together).
- Small samples are not scored: an hour or a departure window needs 120 flights, a route 750, an airline at an airport 500.
- Results for a destination (
?to=DENon a metro page) are tool results and are not indexed. The metro pages are.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Taxi-out is pushback to wheels-up, averaged over departures.
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