US airlines on-time arrival performance skidded on the runway ahead of the busy holiday travel season. After improving a bit in September after a near melt-down over the summer, the overall on-time performance figure for the US major airlines dropped back down to 77.45% among compared to 81.25% in September '07 and 73.7% one year ago (Oct. '06). Some other highlights of the report:

• 8.75% of US commercial flights were late by 16-30 minutes, 4.14% were very late (30-45 minutes) and 8.18% were excessively late (>45 minutes).
• Only 12 US carriers performed at 80% on-time or better in October compared to 28 in September
• Cancellations for October numbered 11536, up from 10,107 in September

On the airport front:

• Salt Lake City(SLC), Cincinnati (CVG), Vancouver (YVR), George Bush (IAH), and Pierre Trudeau(YUL) airports were at the top of the performance lists for both arrivals and departures with better than 82% on-time performance.
• All three major New York airports (JFK, La Guardia and Newark) joined San Francisco (SFO) and Philadelphia at the bottom of the on-time arrival list with on-time arrival percentages ranging from 57%(La Guardia) to 67.6%(PHL).
• Passengers were most likely to experience late departures at Reagan (DCA), Sky Harbor (PHX), La Guardia (LGA), Philadelphia (PHL) and Douglas (CLT). Douglas (Cleveland) saw more than 30% of its flights delayed by 16-30 minutes, 11.6% delayed by 31-45 minutes, and 11.76% delayed by more than 45 minutes.
• The busiest airports Atlanta Hartsfield and O'Hare had on-time departure ratings of 74.24% and 75.25% respectively
• Overall, North Americas major airports tallied a 75.14% on-time departure rating (down from 79.53% in September) and on-time arrival rating of 76.64% (down from 80.54% in September).

Here are links to the complete reports:
October 2007 US Airline Performance Report (.pdf)
October 2007 North American Airport Performance Report (.pdf)