As the holidays get closer, travel is at its highest peak. While airlines can get packed and busy on a normal basis, the holiday season increases it by tenfold. The U.S. Department of Transportation's Bureau of Transportation Statistics offers data on anything related to aircraft, traffic, and airports and situations that can affect your holiday travel including flight delays, unruly passengers, and the worst case scenarios like accidents.
Airline Specifics
The Bureau works to provide data for each airline and even airports. For airline and airport specific on-time data, delay causes, and other data that is tracked and presented, see the Quick Links page in the Airlines, Airports, and Aviation section. Take a look below at the American Airlines carrier at Will Rogers World airport in Oklahoma City, OK.
This is Southwest Airlines at Will Rogers World airport. They vary in air carrier delay and diversion.
This valuable information allows passengers to be aware of any airline specific timing problem they could face, and know the chances of a flight being delayed or changed.
Passengers
The Bureau tracks any unruly passenger incidents that are reported to them. Recently, there has been in increase in incidents leading to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) order that has the FAA "pursue legal enforcement action against any passenger who assaults, threatens, intimidates, or interferes with airline crew members." This year so far, there have been 5,240 unruly passenger reports, 3,798 mask-related incident reports, 991 investigations initiated, and 245 enforcement cases initiated.
While these are high numbers, it's important to know that these are only the incidents that crew members feel need to be reported. Without a doubt, there are other issues that aren't accounted for with the agency. These numbers also don't include any security violations through the Transportation Security Administration.
The Bureau also offers passenger travel data including daily travel statistics, border crossing data, and local area transportation characteristics.
Accident Data
While we try to avoid thinking about aircraft accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) provides data about aircraft accidents that have occurred and been reported. For example, I filtered the final accident data with any investigation involving someone from Oklahoma.
The FAA also provides preliminary accident and incident information. Below is an example of the preliminary reports. While accidents aren't common it's important to be as aware as possible.
As holidays come up, remember the data and information that the Department of Transportation offers you!
See Airlines & Airports.
Clearinghouse site for publicly available FAA data.
The FAA is working with airports to prepare for the winter weather.
BTS offers access to transportation-related research, reports, data, and reference services.
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Eager to know more? Start here.
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