Detroit Metro: On-time flights, fewer passengers

Nathan Hurst / The Detroit News

Romulus --Fewer Detroit Metropolitan Airport passengers are flying these days, but they're on time more often than counterparts in most other areas of the country and are less likely to deal with congestion-related delays on the most-traveled routes.

That's according to a report today from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

Detroit ranked No. 4 for on-time performance in Brookings' report, falling behind only Salt Lake City, Honolulu and San Jose, Calif. The institute says an average of 84.1 percent of flights at Detroit Metro arrives on time, besting other big city airports suffering from increased air traffic congestion in New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta.

Overall, Detroit has seen a 7.6 percent increase in on-time arrivals compared to 2008.

Detroit also ranked well for connectivity to the rest of the world. Among other big American cities, Detroit ranked sixth for the widest variety of non-stop destinations, behind Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

But those increases come as dramatically fewer passengers are flying into Detroit, the Brookings study shows.

Here, roughly 6.2 percent fewer passengers are flying in 2009 compared with 2008, a decline that's steeper than the 5.4 percent national dip.

Brookings researchers also looked at Detroiters' destinations, and data shows locals fly either to or through airports in Chicago, New York and Orlando most frequently. Rounding out the top 10 heavily traveled routes were Minneapolis/St. Paul, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Phoenix and Amsterdam.