FlyerIntel Research
Where Flights Do Not Land
A diversion is not a delay. It is arriving at a different airport altogether, and some places and some routes are far more prone to it than travelers expect.
Published August 31, 2026 · Source period July 2023 – July 2026
Summary
Diversions are rare everywhere (45,825 arrivals across the covered airports over three years), but they are not evenly rare. SBA (Santa Barbara) diverts 0.615% of its arrivals against SJC (San Jose) at 0.044%, a 13.9-fold difference between two airports in the same country. On one route the rate reaches 2.49% (about one flight in 40), and the reasons are structural rather than bad luck.
Key findings
- SBA has the highest arrival diversion rate of any covered airport at 0.615%; SJC the lowest at 0.044%.
- LAS to HNL diverts 2.49% of its flights (roughly one in 40), against a national rate an order of magnitude lower.
- July is the worst month at 0.466% and November the quietest at 0.124%.
- The airports that divert least are clustered in benign, uncongested climates; the ones that divert most are either weather-exposed, capacity-constrained, or both.
What a diversion actually is
A delayed flight arrives late where you meant to go. A diverted flight lands somewhere else. Then you wait, on the aircraft or in a terminal with no gate assigned to you, while the airline works out whether it can refuel and continue, whether the crew has legal hours left, and whether there is a slot to come back into. It is the failure mode that most reliably destroys a day, and it is invisible in an on-time statistic: a diverted flight has no arrival time at its scheduled destination, so it is excluded from on-time rates rather than counted as late.
Arrival diversion rate by airport
| Airport | City | Diverted | Arrivals | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SBA | Santa Barbara | 151 | 24,554 | 0.615% |
| LGA | New York | 2,350 | 456,481 | 0.515% |
| DCA | Washington | 1,994 | 435,126 | 0.458% |
| DFW | Dallas–Fort Worth | 4,318 | 961,642 | 0.449% |
| EWR | Newark | 1,720 | 387,854 | 0.443% |
| MDW | Chicago | 1,057 | 240,488 | 0.440% |
| DAL | Dallas | 915 | 224,035 | 0.408% |
| RSW | Fort Myers | 426 | 107,489 | 0.396% |
| MCO | Orlando | 1,911 | 498,229 | 0.384% |
| JFK | New York | 1,346 | 351,546 | 0.383% |
| DEN | Denver | 3,292 | 963,027 | 0.342% |
| ORD | Chicago | 3,237 | 952,666 | 0.340% |
| HOU | Houston | 569 | 172,208 | 0.330% |
| SAN | San Diego | 968 | 297,664 | 0.325% |
| MIA | Miami | 1,069 | 340,467 | 0.314% |
| IAH | Houston | 1,088 | 359,471 | 0.303% |
| FLL | Fort Lauderdale | 838 | 278,720 | 0.301% |
| BUR | Burbank | 279 | 93,650 | 0.298% |
| SNA | Santa Ana | 408 | 137,357 | 0.297% |
| TPA | Tampa | 657 | 242,635 | 0.271% |
| HNL | Honolulu | 502 | 186,355 | 0.269% |
| BWI | Baltimore | 752 | 299,179 | 0.251% |
| ATL | Atlanta | 2,398 | 1,012,161 | 0.237% |
| MSY | New Orleans | 356 | 154,323 | 0.231% |
| MCI | Kansas City | 344 | 152,684 | 0.225% |
| SJU | San Juan | 239 | 109,607 | 0.218% |
| BNA | Nashville | 695 | 319,633 | 0.217% |
| AUS | Austin | 582 | 272,531 | 0.214% |
| OMA | Omaha | 160 | 75,011 | 0.213% |
| IAD | Washington | 332 | 169,930 | 0.195% |
| BOS | Boston | 842 | 440,886 | 0.191% |
| ANC | Anchorage | 112 | 58,786 | 0.191% |
| PHL | Philadelphia | 577 | 305,143 | 0.189% |
| CHS | Charleston | 146 | 77,396 | 0.189% |
| MKE | Milwaukee | 165 | 87,872 | 0.188% |
| STL | St. Louis | 373 | 198,659 | 0.188% |
| ABE | Allentown | 22 | 11,762 | 0.187% |
| MYR | Myrtle Beach | 81 | 45,481 | 0.178% |
| SFO | San Francisco | 772 | 436,060 | 0.177% |
| SAT | San Antonio | 222 | 127,244 | 0.174% |
| CLT | Charlotte | 1,067 | 618,237 | 0.173% |
| RDU | Raleigh–Durham | 310 | 179,931 | 0.172% |
| JAX | Jacksonville | 152 | 90,311 | 0.168% |
| ILM | Wilmington | 38 | 23,753 | 0.160% |
| CLE | Cleveland | 202 | 127,091 | 0.159% |
| SEA | Seattle | 808 | 510,187 | 0.158% |
| PHX | Phoenix | 874 | 598,496 | 0.146% |
| MEM | Memphis | 105 | 72,783 | 0.144% |
| BUF | Buffalo | 93 | 65,593 | 0.142% |
| CMH | Columbus | 189 | 134,023 | 0.141% |
| MSP | Minneapolis | 491 | 369,815 | 0.133% |
| DTW | Detroit | 494 | 388,616 | 0.127% |
| IND | Indianapolis | 181 | 147,137 | 0.123% |
| ABQ | Albuquerque | 89 | 76,020 | 0.117% |
| LAS | Las Vegas | 659 | 569,643 | 0.116% |
| LAX | Los Angeles | 684 | 595,170 | 0.115% |
| TUS | Tucson | 65 | 59,301 | 0.110% |
| SLC | Salt Lake City | 381 | 355,118 | 0.107% |
| PIT | Pittsburgh | 142 | 132,905 | 0.107% |
| PDX | Portland | 186 | 187,629 | 0.099% |
| ONT | Ontario | 77 | 79,947 | 0.096% |
| SMF | Sacramento | 145 | 172,477 | 0.084% |
| OAK | Oakland | 63 | 117,211 | 0.054% |
| SJC | San Jose | 65 | 146,904 | 0.044% |
Arrivals that ended somewhere other than this airport, as a share of arrivals scheduled into it.
The routes most likely to end somewhere else
| Route | From | To | Diverted | Flights | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LAS → HNL | Las Vegas | Honolulu | 142 | 5,697 | 2.49% |
| SAN → HNL | San Diego | Honolulu | 73 | 5,063 | 1.44% |
| DEN → ASE | Denver | Aspen | 103 | 8,439 | 1.22% |
| PBI → HPN | West Palm Beach | White Plains | 65 | 5,366 | 1.21% |
| DEN → LGA | Denver | New York | 169 | 14,617 | 1.16% |
| SNA → ORD | Santa Ana | Chicago | 73 | 6,716 | 1.09% |
| DFW → LGA | Dallas–Fort Worth | New York | 197 | 20,151 | 0.98% |
| LAS → JFK | Las Vegas | New York | 106 | 10,913 | 0.97% |
| IAH → LGA | Houston | New York | 117 | 12,397 | 0.94% |
| LAS → EWR | Las Vegas | Newark | 88 | 9,441 | 0.93% |
| SAN → JFK | San Diego | New York | 67 | 7,469 | 0.90% |
| ORD → SNA | Chicago | Santa Ana | 60 | 6,716 | 0.89% |
| PSP → SFO | Palm Springs | San Francisco | 66 | 7,512 | 0.88% |
| JFK → DFW | New York | Dallas–Fort Worth | 51 | 6,013 | 0.85% |
| LAS → BOS | Las Vegas | Boston | 43 | 5,168 | 0.83% |
| LAX → EWR | Los Angeles | Newark | 131 | 16,286 | 0.80% |
| MIA → LGA | Miami | New York | 143 | 17,929 | 0.80% |
| MCI → LGA | Kansas City | New York | 46 | 5,848 | 0.79% |
| LGA → DEN | New York | Denver | 114 | 14,618 | 0.78% |
| SMF → DFW | Sacramento | Dallas–Fort Worth | 41 | 5,314 | 0.77% |
Routes with at least 5,000 flights over the period.
Why these routes and not others
The routes at the top of that table have something in common that has little to do with the airlines flying them. An overwater sector has no convenient alternate to hold for, so a decision has to be made early and with fuel in hand. A mountain airport with terrain approaches and a single usable runway direction closes to arrivals in conditions that would barely register elsewhere. A short runway in a crowded metropolitan area leaves no margin when the wind turns. None of that is a judgment about the operator; it is a property of the destination, and it is why the same carrier can look very different on two routes.
Diversion rate by month
How much this should change what you do
Not much, and it would be wrong to imply otherwise. Even the worst airport here delivers well over ninety-nine arrivals in a hundred to the airport on the ticket, and no figure on this page predicts an individual flight. What it is useful for is the margin around a trip that cannot absorb the failure: a same-day connection onto an international departure, a cruise sailing, a wedding. If the destination or the route sits high on these tables and the day has no slack in it, that is worth an earlier flight or a night in hand, because the cost of being wrong is asymmetric.
Pages for what this report covers
Airports: Santa Barbara (SBA) · San Jose (SJC) · New York (LGA) · Washington (DCA) · Dallas–Fort Worth (DFW) · Newark (EWR) · Chicago (MDW) · Dallas (DAL) · Fort Myers (RSW) · Orlando (MCO)
Routes: DEN → LGA · DFW → LGA · LAS → JFK · IAH → LGA · LAX → EWR · MIA → LGA
Methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 21,708,321 individual flight records in the US Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance dataset, covering July 2023 through July 2026. Following BTS methodology, a flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after its scheduled arrival time. Cancelled and diverted flights have no arrival time and are excluded from on-time rates rather than counted as late; cancellation rates are reported separately. Full definitions are published at /methodology/. A flight is counted as diverted where the DOT records it as such, meaning it did not arrive at its scheduled destination. Airport rates are computed over arrivals scheduled into that airport, and an airport appears only where it recorded at least 5,000 arrivals; routes appear only above 5,000 flights, because a diversion is rare enough that a thin route produces a meaningless rate from one or two events. Every figure here is an arrivals measure: flights scheduled into a place that did not get there. The monthly series is computed from the flight records for the same reason, because the seasonal aggregate counts departures that diverted en route, which is a different event.
Limitations
The source dataset covers scheduled domestic flights operated by carriers above the DOT reporting threshold; smaller carriers and international flights are not included. Flights sold under a mainline brand but flown by a regional carrier are attributed to the operating carrier, which is how the DOT records them. Past performance describes what has happened and is not a prediction about any individual flight. The dataset records that a flight diverted, not why. Weather, a medical emergency, a mechanical problem and an airport closure are indistinguishable here, and the explanations offered above are inferences from the geography and operating environment of the airports concerned rather than measurements. Where a diverted flight eventually landed is not recorded either, so none of this describes how long a diversion costs you.
Sources
- FlyerIntel analysis — FlyerIntel · source
- Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance — US Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics · source
Full FlyerIntel methodology · Report a problem with this analysis