South Korea: Incheon airport suffers poor on-time departures

Incheon International Airport has been rated the best service airport for years, but it is struggling to get airplanes to depart on time, according to a global flight information service provider, Monday. In addition to poor weather conditions, particularly in winter, the airport attributes a surge in the number of flights passing through Chinese airspace to its delayed departure record. From December to February, particularly, only half of the airport's flights took off on time. According to the US aviation statistics website Flightstats, Incheon International Airport ranked last among 44 airports for punctual departure performance as of January. The website calculated the departure rate aggregating flights taking off more than 15 minutes later than planned. The average departures from Incheon airport in January were on time in 50% of cases. Such a performance is 38.5 percentage points behind that of the Port of Seattle in the US, which ranks No.1 with 88.5% punctual departures. Such a record is 28.2 percentage points higher than the average rate of on-time departures of all 44 airports combined. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport said a recent increase in air traffic flying over Beijing, China, has influence the departure times from the airport. "Sometimes, the flight path is blocked for several hours due to military exercises conducted by the Chinese air force or we have deteriorating weather conditions and we have to delay the flight for safety reasons," the ministry official said. <br/>