The New York Times looks at the country’s most consistently late airplane—American Airlines Flight 1659, from Newark to Chicago—and asks industry professionals about the rapidly deteriorating quality of air travel in the United States. The short answer: it will take at least a decade to upgrade air traffic control systems to handle the new super-busy runways, so unless airlines stop “maximizing” their profits by scheduling flights so closely together or we build more airports, this is the new modern way to travel.

What can you do to limit how much this affects you, short of not flying until 2017? Avoid Newark airport, which “has more than half of the chronically late flights.” And try checking out flight histories at FlightStats or FlightAware (both covered previously here at Consumerist).

Resources:
FlightStats
FlightAware

“Most Flights Are Late, and It May Only Get Worse” (New York Times)

(Photo: Getty)

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