Worst airports for delays and cancellations this summer

Summer's nearly officially over and that means the season's air travel crush -- and hopefully the chaos -- is set to subside. The last big summer travel weekend for Americans ended on a relatively high note. The flight cancellation rate for the Labor Day holiday weekend was 0.6%, a substantial drop from the summer average of 2.2% from Memorial Day weekend in late May through September 1, according to data from flight tracking site FlightAware. Put that down to a variety of factors, says FlightAware's Kathleen Bangs, including excellent weather -- for the most part -- across the US. "But credit also goes to the airlines for increasing their staffing over the summer," said Bangs, a former airline pilot and spokesperson for FlightAware. The smooth performance came on a weekend where the number of passengers screened at US Transportation Security Administration checkpoints exceeded 2019 passenger volumes for the first time over a holiday weekend since the pandemic began. Is the weekend a harbinger of lower levels of disruption to come? Fall -- toward the end of September, and especially October -- "is the sweet spot for airlines as weather delays and cancellations should be minimized in this upcoming shoulder season before winter," Bangs said via email, with the caveat that a hurricane would mean "all bets are off." While hopes are high for smoother skies ahead, there's no denying that summer air travel has been a mess in the US and around the world. So which airports ultimately fared the worst this summer in terms of the percentages of flights delayed and canceled? Story looks at how things shook out in the United States and globally (based on FlightAware data from May 27 through September 5).<br/>