# World's Most-Delayed Airports



## DET63 (Jan 28, 2010)

> Traveling to India and China? Pack your patience. Airports in those countries top our third annual list of The World's Most Delayed Airports.
> Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport takes the prize for the airport with the least timely arrivals with just 45 percent of its scheduled passenger flights arriving on time. Beijing Capital International Airport has the worst departure record with just 38 percent of commercial passenger flights leaving as scheduled. To gather our information, we relied on FlightStats, a service that tracks historical and real-time flight information around the globe.


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I would think that departure delays are more apt to be the fault of the airport in question, though I suppose flights being put into a holding pattern may also account for delayed arrivals.


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## jis (Jan 28, 2010)

DET63 said:


> > Traveling to India and China? Pack your patience. Airports in those countries top our third annual list of The World's Most Delayed Airports.
> > Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport takes the prize for the airport with the least timely arrivals with just 45 percent of its scheduled passenger flights arriving on time.
> 
> 
> I would think that departure delays are more apt to be the fault of the airport in question, though I suppose flights being put into a holding pattern may also account for delayed arrivals.


At IGI Airport, Delhi a significant part of the arrival and departure delays is due to fog in the winter. Actually diverted flights are a huge problem too. As it turns out domestic airlines are part of the problem because they seem to think that the money they save in not training pilots to use the CAT IIIB landing system in fog is OK. So even though the airport is capable of handling them their aircrafts and crew are not capable of using the systems provided by the airport. IMHO their attitude towards safety leaves much to be desired. Of course it doesnot help either when in the middle of foggy season RVR's fail intermittently. (RVR=Runway Visual Range which is used by the CAT IIIB landing system).

Yet ironically the day I was there the flight that I took was delayed not due to fog, which was having relatively little effect on arrivals and departures that night, but due to the security breach at Newark Airport the previous day, which caused the incoming aircraft (CO 82) to arrive over 5 hours late.

The other big delaying factor is, guess what? SECURITY! What with all the double pat downs and open bag nad search and what nots of all carry ons etc. It must be even worse now since this week all Indian airports are on red alert.


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## saxman (Feb 11, 2010)

jis said:


> At IGI Airport, Delhi a significant part of the arrival and departure delays is due to fog in the winter. Actually diverted flights are a huge problem too. As it turns out domestic airlines are part of the problem because they seem to think that the money they save in not training pilots to use the CAT IIIB landing system in fog is OK. So even though the airport is capable of handling them their aircrafts and crew are not capable of using the systems provided by the airport. IMHO their attitude towards safety leaves much to be desired. Of course it doesnot help either when in the middle of foggy season RVR's fail intermittently. (RVR=Runway Visual Range which is used by the CAT IIIB landing system).


It sounds like your talking about Indian domestic flights. But there's are lots of aircraft in the US not even capable of CAT III approaches either. You need an auto-land system as well as a HUD. My aircraft didn't have all that. The lowest we could go was CAT II, which is 1200 RVR.


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## stntylr (Feb 11, 2010)

I've flown out of three of the airports on the list including on in the top 5.


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## jis (Feb 12, 2010)

saxman said:


> It sounds like your talking about Indian domestic flights. But there's are lots of aircraft in the US not even capable of CAT III approaches either. You need an auto-land system as well as a HUD. My aircraft didn't have all that. The lowest we could go was CAT II, which is 1200 RVR.


I know. The odd thing about these airlines is that some of them are hubbed in Delhi and they know that they will not be able to fly for at least 8 to 12 hours a day, specially during the morning rush hour for at least 6 weeks every year, and yet they do nothing about it. Of late there has been some movement towards getting at least those planes and crews that operate through Delhi upgraded because at least one domestic carrier has gone whole hog for CAT III and they are minting money those 6 weeks at the cost of the others.


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