Best and Worst US Airports for On-Time Flight Arrivals

Among 37 major US airports, Salt Lake City posts the best on-time arrival rate at 84.9%, while Reagan National trails furthest behind at just 73.5%.

That gap matters because arrival time, not departure time, is what the Department of Transportation actually uses to define "on-time" — and it's not the same list of airports you'd get by ranking departures alone.

Key takeaways

• Salt Lake City (SLC) has the best arrival on-time rate among major US airports at 84.9%, followed by Honolulu (HNL) at 83.5% and Washington Dulles (IAD) at 82.5%.
• Reagan National (DCA) has the worst arrival on-time rate at 73.5%, and also the longest average arrival delay among major airports at 22.0 minutes.
• San Francisco (SFO) departs on time 79.6% of the time — a top-10 departure rate — but only 74.4% of arrivals land on time, the largest arrival shortfall of any major airport that departs better than it lands.
• Baltimore/Washington (BWI) shows the opposite pattern: a rough 73.3% on-time departure rate but a much better 80.2% arrival rate, a 6.9-point swing in the airport's favor.
• The best-performing airports are consistent either way you rank them — 8 of the top 10 arrival airports are also top 10 for departures — but the worst-performing list barely overlaps: only 2 of the bottom 10 airports appear on both lists.

Why arrival on-time rate is a different question than departure delays

Most airport delay rankings, including most of the ones on this site, measure how often flights leave on schedule. That's useful for knowing whether you'll sit at the gate, but it isn't what the government's own definition of a delayed flight is built around.

The DOT counts a flight as on-time if it arrives less than 15 minutes after its scheduled arrival time — regardless of when it pushed back from the gate. A flight that leaves 12 minutes late but makes up time in the air still counts as on-time. A flight that leaves right on schedule but lands 18 minutes late does not. For anyone connecting to another flight, being picked up, or making a meeting, the arrival number is the one that actually predicts whether their plan holds together.

FlightRecord's most reliable and most delayed airport rankings are both built on departure on-time rate, using the same 37 major airports (at least 50,000 scheduled departures over the past 12 months) analyzed here. Ranking those same airports by arrival on-time rate instead produces a noticeably different picture, especially at the bottom.

Which major US airports have the best arrival on-time records?

Salt Lake City International (SLC) has the best arrival on-time rate among major US airports at 84.9%, with an average arrival delay of just 11.6 minutes. Four other airports clear 80% on-time arrivals:

• 1. Salt Lake City (SLC) — 84.9% on-time arrivals, 11.6 min average arrival delay
• 2. Honolulu (HNL) — 83.5% on-time arrivals, 10.8 min average arrival delay
• 3. Washington Dulles (IAD) — 82.5% on-time arrivals, 13.5 min average arrival delay
• 4. Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson (ATL) — 81.7% on-time arrivals, 15.0 min average arrival delay
• 5. Los Angeles (LAX) — 81.2% on-time arrivals, 13.8 min average arrival delay

Atlanta's spot on this list is notable on its own: it's the busiest airport by far in this data set, with over 646,000 arrivals in the past 12 months, yet it still lands more than 4 in 5 flights on time. See the full profile for SLC, HNL, IAD, ATL, or LAX.

Which major US airports have the worst arrival delays?

Reagan National (DCA) has both the worst arrival on-time rate among major airports, at 73.5%, and the longest average arrival delay, at 22.0 minutes. Five airports land fewer than 3 in 4 flights on schedule:

• 1. Reagan National, Washington (DCA) — 73.5% on-time arrivals, 22.0 min average arrival delay
• 2. San Francisco (SFO) — 74.4% on-time arrivals, 18.1 min average arrival delay
• 3. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood (FLL) — 74.4% on-time arrivals, 19.0 min average arrival delay
• 4. Newark Liberty (EWR) — 75.2% on-time arrivals, 21.8 min average arrival delay
• 5. Boston Logan (BOS) — 75.2% on-time arrivals, 19.3 min average arrival delay

San Diego (SAN) ties Boston and Newark at 75.2%, just outside this list. Two of these five, Newark and Boston, also turn up among the airports with the biggest gap between departure and arrival performance, covered next. Full profiles: DCA, SFO, FLL, EWR, BOS.

Do the same airports rank worst for both departures and arrivals?

At the top, yes. At the bottom, not really. Comparing the top 10 and bottom 10 major airports by arrival on-time rate against the same rankings by departure on-time rate shows the lists agree far more on who does well than on who does poorly.

Eight of the top 10 arrival airports — SLC, HNL, IAD, LAX, Portland (PDX), Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP), Sacramento (SMF), and Detroit (DTW) — are also in the top 10 for departures. Reliable airports tend to be reliable both ways. But only 2 of the bottom 10 arrival airports — Chicago O'Hare (ORD) and Fort Lauderdale (FLL) — also show up in the bottom 10 for departures. The rest of each "worst" list is made up of different airports entirely, which means an airport's departure ranking alone is a poor guide to how often its flights actually land late.

Airports where arrival and departure performance diverge most

The clearest examples of that gap, comparing each airport's departure on-time rate to its arrival on-time rate:

• San Francisco (SFO) — 79.6% on-time departures, 74.4% on-time arrivals (5.2 points worse on arrival)
• Portland (PDX) — 84.3% on-time departures, 80.9% on-time arrivals (3.4 points worse on arrival)
• Newark Liberty (EWR) — 78.5% on-time departures, 75.2% on-time arrivals (3.3 points worse on arrival)
• LaGuardia (LGA) — 78.9% on-time departures, 75.6% on-time arrivals (3.3 points worse on arrival)
• Baltimore/Washington (BWI) — 73.3% on-time departures, 80.2% on-time arrivals (6.9 points better on arrival)
• Dallas Love Field (DAL) — 72.9% on-time departures, 79.1% on-time arrivals (6.2 points better on arrival)

Why would an airport be good at departures but bad at arrivals?

For the airports that are notably worse on arrival than departure — San Francisco, Newark, LaGuardia, and Boston chief among them — the DOT's own delay-cause data points to a specific, verifiable reason: a much larger share of arrival delay minutes at these airports is attributed to the National Airspace System (NAS) category than departure delay minutes at the same airports.

NAS delay covers things like air traffic control flow restrictions, airspace congestion, and non-extreme weather affecting the flow of traffic — as opposed to a specific plane, crew, or airline being at fault. At San Francisco, NAS causes account for 37.3% of arrival delay minutes versus 21.5% of departure delay minutes at the same airport. At Newark the gap is even wider: 47.9% of arrival delay minutes are NAS-attributed versus 27.0% on departure. LaGuardia and Boston show the same pattern in a smaller way. In plain terms, it's harder to get planes into these airports smoothly than it is to get them out, and the DOT's own reporting says why: congested arrival airspace, not the airlines themselves, is doing more of the damage on the way in.

The reverse pattern — airports like BWI and Dallas Love Field landing flights more reliably than they depart them — doesn't trace back to one dominant cause in the same clean way. Their delay-cause splits are broadly similar on both sides, which suggests the gap has more to do with built-in schedule buffer or route mix than a single systemic issue with the airport itself.

Frequently asked questions

Is it worse to be delayed on departure or on arrival?

Arrival delay is the one that counts officially and the one that matters most practically. The DOT defines an on-time flight as one that arrives less than 15 minutes after its scheduled time, with no allowance for when it left the gate. A flight can depart late and still be on-time if it makes up the difference in the air, and a flight that leaves on schedule but lands late still counts as delayed. If you have a connection, a pickup, or a meeting on the other end, arrival time is what determines whether your plan works.

Which US airports have the best arrival on-time record?

Among major US airports (at least 50,000 scheduled departures over the past 12 months), Salt Lake City (SLC) has the best arrival on-time rate at 84.9%, followed by Honolulu (HNL) at 83.5% and Washington Dulles (IAD) at 82.5%. Atlanta (ATL) and Los Angeles (LAX) round out the top five, both above 81%.

Do the same airports rank worst for both departures and arrivals?

Mostly not. The best-performing airports overlap heavily between the two rankings — 8 of the top 10 arrival airports are also top 10 for departures. But the worst-performing lists barely overlap: only Chicago O'Hare (ORD) and Fort Lauderdale (FLL) appear in the bottom 10 for both arrivals and departures. Airports like Reagan National, San Francisco, Newark, and Boston rank among the worst for arrivals without necessarily ranking as poorly for departures.

Why would an airport be good at departures but bad at arrivals?

At airports like San Francisco, Newark, and LaGuardia, DOT delay-cause data shows arrival delays are disproportionately attributed to the National Airspace System (NAS) category — air traffic congestion and flow restrictions — compared to departure delays at the same airports. San Francisco's arrival delay minutes are 37.3% NAS-attributed versus 21.5% for departures; Newark's gap is even larger. That points to constrained arrival airspace, rather than the airlines' own operations, as the bigger factor on the way in.

What counts as an on-time arrival under DOT rules?

A flight counts as on-time if it arrives at the gate less than 15 minutes after its scheduled arrival time. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from on-time and delay averages and reported separately, so the on-time percentages in this article reflect only completed flights.

As of May 2026, the most recent month in FlightRecord's dataset, this analysis covers 24 months of US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics on-time performance records across roughly 14.1 million domestic flights.