In 2024, approximately 1 billion passengers departed from U.S. airports. Nearly a quarter of those travelers, about 236 million, experienced a flight delay or cancellation, according to a recent report from AirHelp, an air passenger rights company.
While one-in-four odds of experiencing a flight disruption may sound daunting, AirHelp’s deep dive into the data, which is showcased in its 2024 Disruption Report, offers helpful takeaways for travelers, including the most problematic months and the airports to avoid. Because history can sometimes repeat itself, such intel can be a helpful resource for travelers planning flights in 2025 and beyond.
“You can use this information to your advantage, particularly when choosing where to fly out of or—if you must—take a layover,” says Sally French, travel expert for personal finance company NerdWallet.
Here’s what else AirHelp’s recent report turned up, plus how travelers can make the most of the findings to avoid delays and travel disruptions in the future.
U.S. airports with the most flight disruptions in 2024
A regional hub, Aspen Airport, topped the list of 11 airports in AirHelp’s U.S. findings, which only include facilities that serve more than 100,000 passengers annually. In 2024, 36 percent of Aspen’s approximately 420,000 passengers were disrupted. Rutland-Southern Vermont Regional Airport came in second (33 percent), followed by Vero Beach, Florida (32 percent).
Four major metropolitan hubs also made the list: Dallas Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Charlotte. Of those, Dallas Fort Worth had the highest percentage of disruptions and ranked in fifth place overall, with 31 percent of passengers disrupted.
French points out that choosing a larger airport can be beneficial in avoiding—or minimizing—disruptions because smaller hubs have limited alternate routes in case of delays such as weather.
“Sometimes choosing larger airports is better,” French says, noting Aspen’s poor record. “For some travelers, it might make more sense to drive to Denver. Not only does that airport have more reliable service, but it also has so many more routes providing more options.”
Months with the most flight disruptions in 2024
The warm-weather months of July and May experienced the most disruptions in 2024, with 33 percent and 29 percent, respectively, of U.S. air travel passengers disrupted. January came in third, with 28 percent of passengers disrupted.
However, note that the CrowdStrike cyber outage, which caused thousands of delays and cancellations over several days in July 2024, played a key role in those numbers. The outage coincided with the peak of flight traffic for the year. Of the 96.6 million passengers who flew from a U.S. airport in July, 31.6 percent were affected by the Crowdstrike chaos and 64 percent of passengers on July 19, when the outage started, according to AirHelp data.
Minimizing disruptions and receiving compensation
AirHelp’s report also reminds passengers that if their flights are disrupted, they may be entitled to compensation. The organization says this was the case for approximately 38 million travelers globally, including 780,000 in the USA, in 2024.
According to Mike Arnot, spokesperson for Cirium, a leading aviation analytics company that also compiles annual rankings for the world’s most on-time airports and airlines, passengers should “understand the role that various airlines play in the market” and how that affects their chances of flight disruptions.
Arnot notes that budget carriers may have limited resources because of their business models as point-to-point carriers. It is a different model than that of larger carriers, which incorporate connecting flights into what’s known as the hub-and-spoke model.
“If you miss your connecting flight, the larger so-called network carriers might have more options for you,” Arnot explains. “They can put you on a different airline where they have a relationship, for example. To some extent, if you book a flight with an ultra-low cost carrier, if you’re late arriving, that’s the consequence.”
While passenger protections have traditionally been strong in Europe thanks to a law known as EU 261, which went into effect in 2004, the concept has only recently gained traction in the United States. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg spearheaded the initiative to implement new Department of Transportation regulations requiring airlines to provide automatic refunds to affected passengers, which went into effect in October 2024. No word yet on whether those rules will remain in place under the new administration.
