19-January-2007 : What are the chances I'll get delayed?

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19-January-2007 : What are the chances I'll get delayed?

Whether you are flying for business or for pleasure you still want an easy and painless flying experience. The first thing that we can all do as travelers to make our trip smoother is fly on a flight that departs on time, because it means we will either arrive on time or make our connecting flights.

Believe it or not there are some flights that consistently depart late or are canceled on a regular basis. Most people don't know this, some folks believe it is random, but there are a number of factors that can play into a flight being delayed often, such as an airport's regular weather pattern or the type of aircraft you'll be flying.

When I am booking flights I often reference Expedia's flight booking system ( http://www.expedia.com/flights ) because when you click flight details Expedia often shows the on time rating of each flight. Of course not every flight has this information to be posted, but it is very handy.

There are two excellent resources for looking up the on time reliability of airports and flights.

The first web site, a US Government site, does not have complete data and can be confusing to reference , but it can be handy at times
http://www.transtats.bts.gov/OT_Delay/OT_DelayCause1.asp

The second site, Flight Stats, is fairly accurate, easier to use and I find the date to be more complete than the US Gov't site
http://www.flightstats.com

Happy Flying!