Airline delays on the rise for US, Logan

US airlines so far this year have racked up the worst on-time performance since the government began keeping records 13 years ago, and delays are expected to worsen.

At Logan International Airport during the first six months of the year, one in three flights landed late, making the Boston airport the seventh-worst of 32 big United States airports for arrivals, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics said yesterday. Departures were not much better: 26.7 percent of flights leaving were more than 15 minutes late, the bureau's standard for determining whether a flight is on schedule.

Both arrivals and departures at Logan were worse than they were in 2006 and exceed delays nationally, where about one in four domestic flights arrived late, the new data show.

Aviation industry leaders say there is little hope the performance will improve soon, blaming everything from the effects of bad weather to a steady in crease in the number of planes in already-crowded skies, especially over metropolitan New York and major hub airports.

"We have been saying for some time it's going to get worse before it gets better," said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the top airline trade group. Airlines and private-plane owners are pushing Congress to spend billions more on air traffic control upgrades, but are squabbling over how those costs will be split.

One key contributor to the increase in delays is that in the first half of this year, major US airlines operated a record number of flights, nearly 3.7 million. That is up 31 percent from 2000, and industry leaders say airport and air traffic control technology improvements have hardly kept pace, leading to a worsening airborne traffic jam.

Matthew Brelis, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Logan, said, "Massport works hard to do everything within its power to reduce delays" but noted that "the Federal Aviation Administration, not Massport, controls the movement of airplanes both at our airport and in the skies."

Transportation Department data showing how delays at Logan in the first half of this year rank with comparable periods in the years since 1995 weren't immediately available.

Brelis said last December's opening of a sixth runway at Logan has kept delays from growing worse. Before it opened, strong winds from the northwest sometimes forced the airport to shut down all but one runway for takeoffs and arrivals. The new runway can stay open in most northwest winds, handling flights that previously have been forced to keep circling before landing or to wait to take off. Still, Brelis said, Boston will always be vulnerable to the ripple effect of delays caused by thunderstorms or snowstorms elsewhere in the country, especially those that affect air hubs in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York, and Philadelphia.

Although passengers have little control over where and when delays occur, those using Logan are advised to avoid making connections through hubs prone to snow in winter, including O'Hare International in Chicago and other Midwestern and New York-area airports, as well as those prone to summer thunderstorms, such as Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport or Dallas-Fort Worth International. Flying early in the day, before delays begin to accumulate, also helps.

Brelis said a $50 million "centerfield taxiway" expansion for Logan, scheduled to be built by 2009, will offset a projected 11,000 annual hours of delays at Logan, the equivalent of every flight spending about 80 fewer seconds taxiing to and from runways.

For the first half of this year, US Airways had the worst on-time record of all airlines, with just 63.4 percent of flights arriving on time. The airline relies heavily on hubs at Charlotte, N.C., and Philadelphia that ranked among the worst overall for delays. "Certainly, we're not happy with that number, and it's well below where we want it to be," US Airways spokesman Philip Gee said.

JetBlue Airways, which uses congested John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as a hub and was crippled for a week by the February storm, was the second-worst carrier among big airlines, with only 66.2 percent of flights on time. American Airlines, American Eagle, Northwest Airlines, and United were the next worst-ranking big carriers for on-time arrivals.

Of major carriers Southwest Airlines, which flies mainly out of less-congested secondary airports and avoids major hubs, was best for on-time arrivals at 80.7 percent, followed by Delta Air Lines at 78.2 and AirTran Airways at 78.1.

Overall consumer complaints to the Transportation Department also soared across the board in June, up 43 percent from a year earlier. Reports of lost, damaged, stolen, or delayed luggage jumped to 7.9 for every 1,000 passengers in June, up 25 percent from 6.3 a year earlier.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.