The majority of U.S. airports have reduced their number of late departures this year except for New York-area facilities, USA Today reported Tuesday.

In the newspaper's analysis of Federal Aviation Administration data, the largest 31 airports outside the New York region had 8 percent fewer total delays from January through August than during the same period in 2006.

However, delays at the four New York-area airports -- John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark Liberty and Philadelphia, which shares the airspace -- jumped nearly 23 percent, the newspaper said.

That dragged the national average for late departures down to 3.7 percent.

Improvements around the country have been attributed to new runways being opened at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson, Boston Logan, Cincinnati, Minneapolis and Lambert-St. Louis, the newspaper said.

As for New York, the problems of hours-long delays reached a point where on Sept. 27, U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and the White House ordered airlines to find ways to reduce their schedules at Kennedy, where the numbers of flights and delays have grown faster than any other U.S. airport, the report said.  // Copyright 2007 by United Press International



Publication date: 06 November 2007   

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