Airports With the Most Delays This Holiday Season

Which Airports Are Most Likely to Have Delays This Holiday Season?

The airports most likely to have delays this holiday season are Chicago O'Hare, Denver, Newark, LaGuardia, Boston Logan, Dallas Fort Worth, and San Francisco. These same hubs sit near the top of delay and cancellation studies year after year, which makes them the ones to watch again for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's travel in 2026. They also rank among the worst airports in the US for delays the rest of the year.

Holiday air travel keeps setting records. AAA counted a record 82 million Americans traveling over Thanksgiving in 2025, and the year-end stretch broke records again, with more than 110 million people on the move between Christmas and New Year's, according to AAA. Early signs point to another record season in 2026.

More flights packed into the calendar leaves less room to recover when a snowstorm or a ground stop hits. The airports below have the least room to absorb that pressure, so they are worth planning around.

Why Holiday Delays Spike

Holiday delays come down to two forces meeting at the worst time: record passenger volume and winter weather. Planes fly fuller in late November and December than almost any other stretch of the year, so one disruption at a major hub ripples outward to every connecting flight behind it.

Weather is the single biggest cause. About 29 percent of U.S. arrival delays between August 2024 and July 2025 were weather-related, according to Bureau of Transportation Statistics data cited by The Weather Channel. In winter, that share climbs at the northern hubs where snow, ice, and fog are common.

A delayed departure early in the day can cascade into canceled flights by evening. That is why the airport you connect through matters as much as the airport you leave from.

The Airports Most Likely to Have Holiday Delays

The U.S. airports with the most delays are a familiar group of large hubs, and the most delayed airports in 2025 were Chicago O'Hare and Denver. Both gave travelers the highest chance of a delayed flight of any major U.S. airport that year, based on AirHelp's 2025 disruption data. A cluster of East Coast hubs followed close behind, each delaying about one flight in four.

The table below shows the odds of a delay at each hub, with the last column putting each percentage in everyday terms.

Newark stood out for cancellations, not just delays. It recorded the most overall disruptions of any major airport, with 2.7 percent of flights canceled outright.

A separate holiday-window analysis from Transfeero, built on Bureau of Transportation Statistics figures for the November and December peak, put Dallas Fort Worth, Newark, San Diego, Atlanta, and Houston Bush Intercontinental at the front of the pack. December delay shares at those airports ranged from the low 30s to nearly 39 percent.

Winter Weather Is the Deciding Factor

Not every busy airport is equally exposed to weather. The Weather Channel ranked the 30 largest U.S. airports using a decade of Bureau of Transportation Statistics data, and the most weather-delayed hubs were San Francisco, Newark, Chicago O'Hare, LaGuardia, and Boston Logan.

Newark carried the highest share of weather-related delay minutes at about 60 percent, meaning roughly three in five late arrivals there traced back to weather. Chicago O'Hare logged the largest raw count of weather delays of any U.S. airport, averaging more than 25,000 a year across about 28 snow days each winter.

Boston and Denver round out the winter-risk picture. Boston has close to a 50 percent chance of at least one 10-inch snowfall each season, and Denver can see snow from September into May, with major storms on record during both Thanksgiving and Christmas weeks.

For a closer look at how each major hub operates, our Ultimate US Airport Guide breaks down terminals, ground transportation, and timing airport by airport.

Cancellation Risk Is a Different List

Delay-prone airports and cancellation-prone airports are not always the same places. A LendingTree study of nine winter holiday seasons found that Chicago Midway had the highest holiday cancellation rate at 5.8 percent, followed by Baltimore Washington at 3.6 percent and Denver at 3.3 percent.

Warm-weather airports surprise travelers on the delay side. The same study found that Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Houston Hobby, and Orlando posted some of the highest holiday delay rates, driven by sheer volume and tight aircraft turnarounds rather than snow.

Across all 50 of the busiest airports, about 23 percent of winter holiday departures were delayed and 2.5 percent were canceled. The lesson is simple: a sunny forecast at your home airport does not guarantee an on-time departure.

The Busiest Days to Plan Around

The Sunday after Thanksgiving is reliably the single heaviest travel day of the year. TSA screened nearly 18 million people over the 2025 Thanksgiving week, and the FAA handled more than 52,000 flights on the Tuesday before the holiday.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the days right around Christmas and New Year's carry the same crowding. Flying early in the morning gives the system time to recover before afternoon weather and backups build.

If your schedule allows it, traveling on the holiday itself often means thinner crowds and lower delay risk. The days on either side are where the pressure concentrates.

Getting There Without the Curbside Gamble

A delayed flight is frustrating enough without an unreliable ride to the terminal on top of it. The ground portion of a holiday trip is the part you can actually control, and it sets the tone for everything after.

LUXY Ride is a technology platform that connects passengers with a nationwide network of licensed, insured professional chauffeurs. Book a holiday airport transfer in advance and a Partnered Chauffeur is assigned to your trip ahead of time, so the rate is locked in ahead of time with no surprises at the curb.

Pricing is flat and all-inclusive of gratuities and tolls. You receive a booking confirmation, a chauffeur assignment, a 24-hour reminder, and day-of updates, and your assigned chauffeur stays in direct contact for pickup. For early departures out of a busy hub, that certainty is the difference between a calm start and a stressful one.

Travelers who want to compare hubs before booking can start with our guide to the busiest airports in the United States, then arrange a transfer for the one they are flying through. The same standard of service follows you across major airports and cities nationwide.