Domestic travel getting worse?

[indigo_rose99]

I have this gut feeling that domestic US travel sucks and I am always getting stranded and delayed. That couldn't be right. I travel internationally way more.

So I checked. My last domestic trip left me stranded a three hour drive from home. So in my most recent sample of domestic air travel, it sucks worse than international. That explains my gut.

So for those of you who travel more domestically, has it gotten worse in the past year? More delays and cancellations? Or is it just me?

Comments

[ovrclokd.livejournal.com]

yes. i've read all sorts of statistics about how delays and cancellations are up, seat occupancy is at its highest ever (which means less options if you do get delayed/cancelled), and in general the whole system is melting down.

in 2008, seven of my first ten domestics flights were delayed. then i stopped counting because it was too depressing.

[indigo-rose99.livejournal.com]

Statistics are my thing. Figuring that the numbers should be public, I went searching. I was impressed at how badly all statistics on late, delayed, canceled or flights sitting on the runway were reported. It was impossible to get raw numbers. When summarized in a table or article, it was like someone read the "How to report statistics in the least informative manner possible." What I really wanted were graphs of these metrics over time and there were none.

Which scares me, because it takes actual effort to be this incompetant.

After a lot of work, I managed to download some summary data with dates and made my own graph. It was only of the number of planes sitting, ready to take off for more than an hour. The data only went back to about 1995. But it was scary enough. As time passes, the numbers are up, up and more up. 2007 had the most planes sitting for the longest times. The way things are going, I expect 2008 to be up from 2007, trending upward as it has for years.

Depressing.