Spokane Airport rated No. 1 for on-time operations

The Spokane International Airport has soared past its competition in the category of on-time operations.

Global flight data services and applications company FlightStats, Inc. released its analysis of on-time flight operations for February, ranking Spokane International Airport's punctuality performance the highest. Of Spokane Airport's 1,274 flights, 98.4 percent tracked an actual gate arrival time, cancellation or diversion, 92.97 percent of them were found to depart on time and only 7.03 percent of the flights were delayed 15 minutes or more, according to information on www.flightstats.com.

"There is a lot of credit to go around for this kind of performance including the airlines and air traffic control," Spokane International Airport wrote on its Facebook page. "There is also much more to this because without all of us working together including operations, airfield maintenance, facilities maintenance, police, AARF (aircraft rescue and fire fighting), IT (information technology), parking and administration, we could not achieve this kind of result for our customers in the region."

Anchorage ranked No. 2 for February with 92.67 percent of its tracked flights departing on time and only 7.33 percent of them experiencing a 15-minute-plus delay. Lihue Airport on the Hawaiian island of Kauai came in third, with 100 percent of its flights tracked and 92.39 percent of them departing on time and 7.61 percent of them experiencing delays of 15 minutes or more.

In contrast, airports in cities such as Toronto, Ontario; Montreal, Quebec; West Palm Beach, Fla.; and New York City ranked quite lower — Nos. 83, 79, 85 and 80, respectively — with sometimes more than a quarter of their flights experiencing 15-minute delays.

Seattle ranked 13th for on-time operations in February. Of the 13,773 flights, 99.11 percent were tracked, 89.65 percent were on time and 10.35 percent were delayed 15 minutes or more.

In January, Spokane International Airport came in 12th in the on-time ranking and was beat out by airports in cities such as Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Tulsa and Tucson. However, a year ago in February 2015, Spokane also earned the No. 1 ranking for on-time operations.

Spokane International Airport is served by six airlines and processed nearly 3 million passengers and 64,174 air cargo tons in 2013. It is the second-largest airport in Washington and is considered by the Federal Aviation Administration to be a small hub.

Info: www.flightstats.com/company/monthly-performance-reports/airports