AUSTIN, Texas — Austin continues to grow, and the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS) is witnessing that growth firsthand.
One of the ways to see how the airport is addressing the growth is by taking a look at the number of on-time departures from Austin.
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics said in November 2022, 76.77% of flights left on-time at AUS. That's a dip from October 2022, when 82.16% of flights made it out on-time.
Overall, in 2022, 75.34% of flights departed on-time from the Austin airport. That percentage doesn't include December numbers during the Southwest Airlines meltdown.
Ideally, airports want to have an on-time performance of over 80%, according to OAG. How an airport does with it's on-time departure performance could be an indication of how well it's managing growth.
Journey With AUS is the Austin airport's improvement program. Over the next several years, the airport will be expanding and updating, including the outbound luggage system.
"We have a system in place that's a little outdated," said Bailey Grimmett with AUS. "So, we are improving that, and that will actually ensure that less luggage is getting to the wrong aircraft ... Sometimes that can delay things."
Grimmett said it's hard to tell why exactly flights don't leave on time, but the airlines could be another contributing factor.
"So airlines do ... oversee their own operations," she said. "So, if they have only a certain amount of gates available and maybe they're behind in this one flight [and] that can delay the next flight potentially."
Grimmett said the airport will also be adding a new midfield concourse with at least 10 gates.
"We just know that we need the gate capacity," Grimmett said. "Whether it will rearrange things and help with delays, I'm just not sure."
Last year was a record-breaking one for the Austin airport, with over 21 million passengers flying out. This was the most people who had walked through the gates since 2019, which had the previous record with 17 million.
Grimmett said right now, the airport is able to move people through efficiently. But as more flights are added and more people move to Central Texas, the expansion is needed.