Flight cancellations can be caused by a wide range of circumstances. Inclement weather, staff shortages, technical issues or previous delays that interfere with future flights. These are just a few of the situations that might lead to your flight being cancelled, which nobody wants to experience. While some of these circumstances can’t be helped, it doesn’t mean that you, the passengers, should have to suffer the consequences, especially if the issues are due to no fault of your own.
It’s true, flight cancellations are no new thing, but they do seem to be getting more and more frequent. This is a trend that seems to develop over the last several years, and just like certain airlines seem to have more cancellations than others, so do certain airports. The question is, why do some airports experience more frequent cancellations?
In addition to those circumstances already mentioned, some of the common causes for airport specific cancellations are things like air traffic congestion and limitations caused by infrastructure issues. If these circumstances are what caused your flight to be cancelled, then why shouldn’t you be compensated for your inconvenience?
Fortunately, you can be, but before we look at what you can do about a cancelled flight, read on to find out which airports have the highest cancellation rates. Maybe it will allow you to change your plans and minimize your risk of having your flight cancelled. So, without further ado, these are the airports at which you’re most likely to experience a flight cancellation, according to 2024 data from FlightAware. Along with the airport name and location, a little information about each that might explain some of the delays and cancellations is provided as well.
China’s Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport served nearly 53 million passengers in 2023 and more than 60 million in 2024. Considering the huge number of passenger and flight traffic, it’s no surprise that the airport experiences some delays and cancellations. Cancellations, specifically, occur more often during the summer months. In addition to the large amount of traffic, some other possible causes of cancellations at the busy airport include severe weather, more specifically thunderstorms during the summer months, airline and airport staffing shortages, runway space limitations, and airspace issues.
In 2023 and 2024 America’s Newark Liberty International Airport, located in New Jersey, served around 49 million passengers. The service of so many passengers, and the fact that the airport is a major hub for New York City and beyond, has resulted in excessive congestion. On top of those issues, the limited airspace surrounding the airport only contributes to the problem. Of course, bad weather is also a factor, an issue that the airport typically deals with during the winter months.
LaGuardia Airport might not serve as many passengers as Newark Liberty, serving just over 32 million in 2023, but it also shares the airspace with both Newark and JFK Airports. So, LaGuardia has many of the same issues contributing to the high number of cancellations as Newark, another of which is weather. Additionally, LaGuardia only has two runways, which makes handling so much traffic difficult, so even one short delay can cause delays and cancellations to quickly spin out of control.
In 2023 traffic at Toronto Pearson International Airport grew by nearly 10 million passengers, from 35.6 million in 2022 to 44.8 million in 2023, nearly reaching pre-pandemic levels. Canada’s busiest airport doesn’t seem to have the land and airspace limitations that some of the other airports with a high rate of cancellations do. The biggest problem with Toronto Pearson is undoubtedly weather issues, which occur frequently, particularly during the winter months. Construction and air traffic control also contribute to the high rate of cancellations.
Soekarno-Hatta International is Indonesia’s busiest airport and the second busiest in South-East Asia, serving nearly 50 million passengers in 2023. It’s no surprise, then, that congestion is one of the contributing factors in regard to delays and cancellations. The airport has also recently been undergoing renovations, which has led to some cancellations and delays too, as have the common occurrence of mechanical issues. The largest contributor to flight interruptions at Soekarno-Hatta, though, is weather.
More than 41 million passengers traveled through Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport in 2024, 16.3 million of which were international travelers. According to early data from this year the airport is not off to a good start for 2025. To be fair, weather conditions are often a contributing factor, including on a day in February when an excessive number of flights were cancelled due to weather conditions. In total, the cancellations amounted to more than 50 flights, with the other major contributing factor being a shortage of air traffic controllers.
Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport is the busiest airport in China and served more than 63 million passengers in 2024. There are several causes for the airport's frequent delays and cancellations, one of which is the limited amount of commercial airspace, as most of the airspace is controlled by the military. Weather is also a frequent contributing factor, particularly heavy rains and thunderstorms, so much so that the airport warns passengers to watch for delays during severe weather.
There’s really no mystery as to why Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport has so many delays and cancellations. The airspace surrounding the airport is one of the busiest and most congested in America. While the airport itself only served a little over 26 million passengers in 2024, the airspace is occupied by more than just commercial planes. It’s also occupied by an unusually high number of military aircraft.
Because of the recent accident that occurred at Ronald Reagan National, and the shortage of air traffic controllers, they plan to reduce the number of planes arriving per hour by two. This might enhance safety but could result in even more delays and cancellations.
Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport served more than 40 million passengers last year and has the capacity to serve up to 45 million. This makes for a lot of traffic in the airport's airspace, but high demand is not the only thing causing delays and cancellations. Staff shortages and weather-related issues are also factors that contribute to the high number of delays and cancellations. Additionally, like in other airports in China, there's the issue of limited airspace as well.
In 2024 Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport served more than 66 million passengers and serviced nearly 500,000 arriving and departing flights. It’s one of the best-connected airports in all of Europe, with connectivity to more than 300 destinations around the world. The large airport has the capacity to handle this much traffic, but staff shortages and weather phenomena still cause delays and cancellations. In 2023, 4,662 departing flights were cancelled altogether, out of more than 220,000 scheduled.
There’s not much that you can do about the issues that cause flight cancellations, but you can minimize your chances of experiencing them.
The first step is knowing which airports experience the most cancellations and during which times of the day or year they are most frequent at any specific airport.
The second step is trying to avoid the times when cancellations are more likely, making connections through other airports, or booking direct flights so that you only have to worry about cancellations at one airport instead of multiple different ones.
If all efforts to avoid airport flight cancellations fail and you didn’t purchase travel insurance to cover cancellations, then you still have the option of trying to get compensation for your cancelled flight. While this may be more difficult in the U.S. and some other countries, it’s a bit easier in most European countries.
You can try to contact the powers that are on your own or you can hire a professional compensation claim company like Click2Refund to help you with the process. It may not be worth it if you paid very little for your flight, but expensive international flights can put a pretty big dent in your wallet, so it’s worth going after the compensation that you deserve.