Memorial Day travelers spent an estimated $269 million on flights that never took off between 2021 and 2025, and this year, more than half are cutting back before they even pack. CouponFollow paired 5 years of federal flight performance data with a survey of hundreds of U.S. travelers to see how delays, cancellations, and rising costs are affecting the holiday travel experience.
Memorial Day flight cancellations cost travelers an estimated $269 million in ticket value between 2021 and 2025, with 2022 alone accounting for nearly half ($133 million) in a single holiday weekend.
Memorial Day flight reliability is getting worse: the share of flights delayed 15+ minutes nearly doubled from 13.7% in 2021 to a five-year high of 28.3% in 2024, and remained elevated at 22.3% in 2025.
Frontier Airlines delays nearly 1 in 3 Memorial Day flights it operates (31.7%), the highest rate of any major U.S. carrier. Alaska Airlines is the most reliable, with a 16.4% delay rate and a 0.64% cancellation rate.
New York-area airports rank in the top 3 nationally for Memorial Day cancellations: LaGuardia (3.84%), Newark (2.85%), and JFK (2.60%), all more than double the national average of 1.16%.
The safest time to fly Memorial Day weekend is Saturday or Sunday before 8 a.m. (90%+ on-time). The riskiest is Friday after 7 p.m., when 1 in 3 flights (33.5%) are delayed.
More than half of Memorial Day travelers (53%) have downgraded their 2026 plans due to rising costs.
62% of Memorial Day travelers have skipped travel insurance or flexible cancellation options to save money.
Memorial Day flight reliability has worsened year over year since the post-COVID recovery, and the bounce-back didn't stick.
Holiday travel comes with higher stakes, and looking at multi-year flight performance trends helps reveal where and how those issues tend to show up.
Memorial Day flight cancellations cost travelers an estimated $269 million in ticket value between 2021 and 2025, with 2022 alone accounting for nearly half ($133 million) in a single holiday weekend.
Friday carries the highest cancellation rate of the entire Memorial Day window (1.82%), more than double Saturday (0.90%) and Sunday (0.79%). Sunday is the safest day to fly, with an 81.0% on-time rate.
DFW and DEN each appear on 3 of the 10 most-delayed Memorial Day corridors, with Newark (EWR) showing up as a destination on 3 separate routes. The 10 most delayed flight routes are:
6 of the 10 most cancellation-prone Memorial Day routes in the country involve LaGuardia as either the origin or destination. The worst corridors for flight cancellations are:
Southwest has the lowest Memorial Day cancellation rate of any major carrier (0.46%), but still delays nearly 1 in 4 flights it operates (23.5%).
JetBlue and Allegiant combine high delay frequency with long delays when they slip: JetBlue delays 27.3% of Memorial Day flights at an average of 23 minutes, and Allegiant delays 25.9% at an average of 20 minutes.
Dallas is a double-airport problem: Love Field (DAL) has a 29.8% departure delay rate, and DFW has a 28.3% rate, both ranking in the top 4 worst departure hubs nationally.
Salt Lake City is the most reliable Memorial Day departure hub in the country (86.6% on-time, 0.63% cancellation rate), with Portland (85.1% on-time) and Minneapolis (83.8% on-time) rounding out the top three.
Before any trip begins, travelers put in significant effort to reduce costs. From comparing prices to making trade-offs, saving money is often part of the planning process.
Memorial Day travelers spend an average of 3.1 hours hunting for deals, yet 46% focus most on hotel deals, even though flights are typically the single biggest cost of the trip. Dealhunters' priorities after hotels are:
The bigger the travel group, the longer the deal hunt: parties of 5 or more average 4.4 hours of searching, nearly double the 2.6 hours solo travelers put in. Women average 4.0 hours vs. 3.0 hours for men.
2 in 3 Memorial Day travelers (66%) have accepted at least one inconvenience to save money. The most common sacrifices:
77% of Memorial Day travelers have made at least one cost cut for 2026. The most common adjustments:
57% of millennials have downgraded their 2026 plans due to rising costs, and 44% use travel promo codes or coupons to stretch their budget, compared to just 25% of baby boomers.
72% of travelers say deal-hunting is worth the effort, but 33% are neutral or skeptical that it results in meaningful savings. Baby boomers are the most doubtful (15% not confident), compared to 5% of millennials.
If you're traveling this Memorial Day weekend, consider booking morning flights, favor weekend departures over Friday evening, and give yourself a cushion if your route runs through a historically delay-heavy airport.
It's also worth reconsidering travel insurance like Avanti. Yes, cutting it saves money upfront, but a single cancellation can wipe out everything you saved. A little planning around the patterns goes a long way toward keeping your holiday budget intact.
CouponFollow commissioned an online survey of 931 U.S. adults via CloudResearch Connect. Respondents qualified if they were planning to travel for Memorial Day weekend 2026 (May 23 to 26) or had traveled for Memorial Day in a prior year. Quotas were applied for age, gender, and household income.
Of the 931 qualified respondents, 717 were planning to travel in 2026; all traveler-specific figures use this subset as the base unless otherwise noted. Age was converted into generational cohorts: Gen Z (18 to 29, 17%), millennials (30 to 45, 53%), Gen X (46 to 61, 24%), and baby boomers (62 and older, 7%).
The sample included 479 women (51%), 445 men (48%), and 4 non-binary respondents (less than 1%). Numeric responses were cleaned using the interquartile range method to remove extreme outliers.
Flight Performance Data:
Flight performance data was sourced from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics Reporting Carrier On-Time Performance database, covering the 5-day Memorial Day travel window (Thursday through Monday) from 2021 to 2025, totaling 467,413 flight records. The year 2020 was excluded because COVID-19 reduced Memorial Day flight volume by approximately 70%. Carrier, airport, and route-level analysis required minimums of 3,000 flights, 3,000 departures, and 300 flight operations, respectively, across the 5-year period.
Dollar Value Estimate:
The estimated $269 million in ticket value lost to Memorial Day cancellations was calculated by multiplying 5,409 canceled flights by 117 average passengers per flight (an 138-seat average aircraft at 85% load factor) and by $425, the average one-way fare (half of AAA's reported $850 roundtrip average for Memorial Day 2025). This figure reflects ticket value only and excludes secondary losses, such as hotel costs, activities, and rebooking fees.
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