<\/p>\n
For routine travelers such as Bayfield resident Ron Martin, the Durango-La Plata County Airport seems to have its share of delays and cancellations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty much a shared frustration that we commiserate about,\u201d said Martin, who uses the airport every week and has more than 1 million airline miles traveled. \u201cWe try not to take it out on the crews or desk people, but it is hugely frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin\u2019s annoyance has some basis in reality.<\/p>\n
The Durango-La Plata County Airport is below the middle ranking for on-time arrivals, departures and cancellations when compared with 1,200 airports around the world. During a four-month period between August and November, 31 percent of arriving flights were delayed, 26 percent of departing flights were delayed and 2 percent of flights were canceled, according to FlightView, which tracks commercial flights.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s understandable considering it is a regional airport in the mountains that is serviced by two major hubs \u2013 Denver and Dallas\/Fort Worth \u2013 that also contend with severe weather issues, said Kip Turner, director of the Durango-La Plata County Airport.<\/p>\n
When compared with other regional airports in the mountains \u2013 and, therefore, subject to adverse weather conditions \u2013 Durango ranks about the same for delays and cancellations, Turner said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say we\u2019re at par or even better,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are a mountain airport. We deal with mountain conditions, and that does affect sometimes the averages or data that goes into on-time performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
FlightView began tracking on-time performance only four months ago in Durango. On average, Durango ranked 831st for on-time arrivals, 775th for on-time departures and 903rd for cancellations when compared with 1,200 airports worldwide \u2013 first being the best, 1,200th being the worst.<\/p>\n
FlightView was unable to provide a comprehensive breakdown of specific flights that contributed to delays and cancellations in Durango. Flights are considered \u201cdelayed\u201d if they depart or arrive 15 minutes or more after their scheduled times. The data is aggregated from a variety of sources, including the FAA and airlines. The company can track on-time data for more than 90 percent of all flights, according to a spokesman.<\/p>\n
Turner said the airport has little control over on-time flights or cancellations. It\u2019s more a reflection of weather conditions, airline performance and Durango\u2019s regional airport status, he said.<\/p>\n
Rather than compare Durango\u2019s airport to airports worldwide, Turner prefers to compare it to regional airports such as Grand Junction and Santa Fe, which are similar in size, geographical location and weather patterns \u2013 especially Grand Junction, which averages about 120 flights more per month than Durango. Grand Junction performed worse for on-time departures but better for on-time arrivals and cancellations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not an apples-to-apples airport for every other regional airport in the county,\u201d Turner said. \u201cFor example, if you take a mountainous regional airport and you compare it to a coastal regional airport that never has weather except for an occasional hurricane, they\u2019re going to have year-round fewer problems.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though Turner said it is unfair to compare Durango to large hubs, he noted that Durango\u2019s performance is not that far off from Denver International Airport, which is the sixth busiest airport in the world. DIA ranked 406th for on-time arrivals, 563rd for on-time departures and 607th for cancellations during the four-month period.<\/p>\n
Durango lacks significant resources to deal with mechanical or weather-related issues, Martin said. The same person who issues a ticket may move bags onto the plane and perform deicing, he said. But overall, the airport does a reasonable job for its size.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe frustration is you see one machine out there clearing the runway and you think, \u2018Jeez, if there were three machines out there, we would get this done in a third of the time.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Weather, remoteness cited as reasons by airport director<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":107270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[916,915,13,167],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-107269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-air-transport","tag-durango-la-plata-county-airport","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-local-news-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107269"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=107269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}