Fly The Friendly Skies?

Scott McCartney reports that the bad dream of air travel has become a complete nightmare in today's Wall Street Journal (sub req):

The first half of 2007 has been the worst for air travel delays since the Department of Transportation started keeping detailed statistics 13 years ago, the government said yesterday.

And preliminary numbers show July won't do much to reverse travel woes, either.

June 2007 was the second-worst June on record for flight delays, with only 68.1% of flights arriving on time as a result of more jets in the sky and particularly bad weather at key airport hubs like Dallas-Fort Worth International. Last year in June, 72.8% of flights arrived on-time. Only June 2000 was worse than this year at 66.3% on-time, when surging travel demand and airline labor battles clogged air transportation.

The Bureau of Transportation Statistics said 462 flights in June 2007 sat waiting to take off for more than three hours after departing the gate, and 12 were stuck for more than five hours. Continental Airlines Flight 728 from Newark, N.J., to Denver on June 8 had the longest tarmac delay of the month at 383 minutes -- more than six hours. That day, a Federal Aviation Administration computer failed and left planes grounded across the East Coast, then thunderstorms popped up in the Newark area in the afternoon.

As bad as those numbers are, they don't even tell the whole horror story. Northwest actually ranked second best in on-time flights in July. Why? Because your flight can't be late if it never leaves:

Flight cancellations in July soared, and not just at Northwest Airlines Corp., which has been canceling flights liberally all summer because of a shortage of available pilots. FlightStats counted 1,895 canceled Northwest flights in July compared with 264 flights Northwest canceled in July 2006. American, JetBlue Delta and Continental all saw large percentage increases in cancellations, too.

I'm actually fortunate in that most of my business travel is international and airlines appear more hesitant to cancel or delay the flights that bring home the big bacon. For those harried domestic road warriors, it's been a long, hot summer which looks to get worse before it gets better. Be sure to bring a good book (or four).