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If you fly to golf trip destinations with any frequency, chances are you've had a flight delayed or cancelled before.
It's the worst - especially on the front end of a trip, when a delay can ruin that exciting arrival-day round.
If you're planning to fly to a golf destination in 2023, factoring in the susceptibility of your arrival airport to delays could be the difference between your trip going smoothly or starting with disaster.
The best and worst major airports for golfers in 2022
Based on percentage of flights arriving on time, here are the best three airports from last year (data through November 2022):
#3: Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minn. (MSP) - 82.67% on-time arrivals
Summer golf trippers love the long daylight hours and mild temperatures found in the Gopher State, especially for those headed well north to resorts like Cragun's, Giants Ridge and Fortune Bay.
#2: Atlanta, Ga. (ATL) - 82.79% on-time arrivals
Given how my fellow travelers like to complain about Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, I was surprised to see it so highly ranked for on-time arrivals. Of course, it's often a waypoint en route to other destinations, but if you're connecting through Atlanta on your way to another airport for your trip, it's nice to know that you should make your connection because your flight in should be on time. Or, if Atlanta's your final destination, it puts you close to resorts like Chateau Elan, Reynolds Lake Oconee, Barnsley and others.
#1: Salt Lake City, Utah (SLC) - 85.22% on-time arrivals
Though the St. George's area is better-known for its destination golf, there's plenty of worthy golf within reach of Salt Lake City, too including resorts like Homestead and Park City Mountain Resort, not to mention several acclaimed private clubs.
By comparison, other huge connector airports like Chicago-O'Hare (ORD; 79.91%), Dallas (DFW; 77.79%) and New York-Kennedy (JFK; 72.19%) finished 10th, 16th and 25th, respectively out of 30 major airports surveyed. Bringing up the rear was Newark (EWR), with a dismal 68.59% of on-time arrivals.
The 3 best (and worst) major airlines for golfers in 2022
The BTS also breaks down flight delay reliability by carrier, tracking 10 major airlines and, when applicable, their codeshare partners. Overall on-time arrivals plummeted from 81.08% in 2021 to 76.72% in 2022, and no carrier was immune.
Number 1 for reliability last year was Delta Air Lines and their partners. They managed to get passengers to their destinations on time 82.14% of the time. It's no coincidence that the two best airports in the section above - SLC and ATL - are Delta hubs. Alaska Airlines (79.06%) and United Airlines (78.74%) rounded out the top three.
Despite mostly operating along less-trafficked routes and to smaller airports, the least-punctual airline of 2022 was Allegiant Air, with only 63.39% of scheduled flights yielding on-time arrivals. JetBlue (64.63%) and Frontier (66.10%) also saw more than one in every three flights fail to arrive on time.
While the likes of Frontier and Allegiant do offer attractively low airfares, their reliability issues speak to the old adage, "You get what you pay for." Or, in this case, "You don't get what you don't pay for."
(Note: They may not get you to your destination on time, but one statistic in Allegiant's favor surrounds mishandled - "lost, damage, delayed [or] pilfered" per the BTS' definition - baggage. Over the course of 2022, Allegiant only mishandled 10,295 bags out of more than 6.6 million that were stowed on their planes, a rate of 0.16 per 100 bags. Last on this list: American Airlines, which mishandled 0.88 bags per 100, or more than 900,000 out of nearly 105 million.)
Southwest Airlines is popular among golfers because of their generous allowance of two checked bags per guest. They came in sixth in 2010, with an on-time percentage of 73.18% across more than 1.3 million scheduled flights.
Airport advice from a longtime traveling golfer's perspective
Having logged my share of air miles in recent years en route to and from various golf destinations, here are five assorted airport thoughts I'd like to pass along:
1. Favorite airline: Delta, by a mile. Whenever possible, I prefer the Atlanta-based carrier. Even though the in-flight experience across airlines is pretty much the same, the experience with Delta just feels more civilized. I especially like the feature of their app where you can track your baggage along your journey with you.
2. Tag your golf bag. Even when flying Delta or the other airlines that offer bag-tracking, there's no excuse not to toss a Tile or Apple AirTag tracker in your golf bag. The horror stories from last summer about people's clubs languishing for weeks in the bowels of Heathrow and other European airports scared me straight.
3. Two hours early is on time. I always arrive at the airport 120-plus minutes before my flight departs, and to date (knock on wood) I have never had my golf bag misplaced. The way I see it, it gives my airline time to misplace my bag for an hour or so before recovering and getting it into the plane on time.
4. Southern hubs preferred. In my experience, connecting through the major airports across the southern half of the U.S. has yielded better luck for me than their northern counterparts. Atlanta (ATL) on Delta trips and Charlotte (CLT) and Dallas-Ft. Worth (DFW) when flying American have been good to me on recent trips.
5. Pop a wheelie. I swear by my Sun Mountain ClubGlider golf travel bag. Its retractable second set of wheels makes it easy to get from parking to check-in with no hassle at all. That said, baggage handlers being less
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