Good luck getting home for the holidays.
The Big Apple’s major airports — JFK, La Guardia and Newark — are among the worst in the nation for on-time arrivals.
The big three routinely see planes turning up at least 15 minutes after their scheduled arrivals, according to just-released figures from the federal government.
More than one-third of the flights into all three of the airports were late in August, according to the US Department of Transportation’s October Air Travel Consumer Report.
Newark was the worst airport in the nation for on-time arrivals, followed by JFK, Boston’s Logan, La Guardia and San Francisco International.
It’s provided little comfort to passengers, many of whom are finalizing Thanksgiving travel plans.
“I’ve been stuck at all of them,” said frequent traveler Marlene Olivo, 30, who was at JFK last week. “Here you don’t have enough space, and you have to wait for gates to open.”
At Newark, an amazing 40 percent of all flights were late. That’s 20 percent higher than its track record over the same time period last year.
JFK came in a close second. Nearly 38 percent of flights arriving there were late in August, a 16 percent jump from 2010.
And La Guardia didn’t do much better. Nearly 34 percent of all flights to the 71-year-old airport were late, a 10 percent hike from August of last year.
Unfortunately, the long-term picture for the area airports isn’t any better.
In the first eight months of 2011, flights turned up late 36 percent of the time at Newark, 31 percent at La Guardia and 28 percent into Kennedy.
The DOT considers any flight that comes in 15 minutes after its scheduled arrival time late, and the report cited many instances of flights that arrived beyond the 15-minute threshold.
One of the worst was JetBlue Flight 160 from Orlando to JFK. Its average delay was one hour, 45 minutes. In all, the flight arrived late 20 out of 31 times in August.
While stressing that it has made changes to alleviate the persistent delays, the Port Authority, which operates all three airports, acknowledged the problem.
“The long-term answer to the region’s flight delays remains federal funding of a NextGen satellite-based navigation system,” PA spokesman Ron Marsico said.
“That system will reduce congestion by moving airplanes more efficiently nationwide while maintaining the highest safety standards.”