Guide
MLK and Presidents Day weekends: winter long weekends, year by year
Most years the two winter long weekends fly within a few points of normal. Then MLK 2024 ran 59.0% on time and Presidents Day 2025 64.1%. What the four years show.
On Monday 15 January 2024, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, about half of all US flights that operated arrived on time and roughly one scheduled flight in six never left. At O'Hare fewer than one departure in five reached its destination on time across the whole four-day weekend. Thirteen months later, on the Sunday of Presidents Day weekend 2025, the national on-time rate fell below 60% again.
Those two weekends dominate what the data can say about winter long weekends. In the other years the gap to the surrounding weeks was a few points either way. That is how I read it: these are not busy weekends that break the system, they are ordinary weekends that fall in the heart of the storm season and occasionally draw a very bad one.
Martin Luther King Jr. weekend
During the holidayNormal weeks either side
50.0%85.0%
All US flights, Friday to Monday. Normal weeks are the two weeks either side of the window. Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
In 2023 the MLK weekend ran 80.1% on time, 0.9 points better than the weeks around it. In 2025 it ran 79.9%, 2.0 points worse. Both are ordinary results.
The 2024 weekend was not. It ran 59.0% on time against 76.4% in the surrounding weeks, and cancelled 10.42% of its flights against 3.31%. Of the flights that did operate, 17.9% arrived an hour or more late.
The detail shows a weather event, not a holiday one. The damage was concentrated at the northern and central hubs: O'Hare, Midway, Detroit, Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth and St. Louis all had weekends far below normal, and Midway cancelled more than a third of its departures. The West Coast ran far better. That pattern is consistent with the arctic outbreak and Midwest blizzard of mid-January 2024. Two carriers carried a second burden: Alaska cancelled about a quarter of its flights over the four days and United about a sixth, at a time when both airlines' Boeing 737 MAX 9 fleets had been grounded since early January after the Alaska door-plug incident.
The 2026 weekend is the mirror image and a useful warning about reading these figures. It ran 76.8% on time, 3.5 points worse than its normal weeks, with delays heaviest at O'Hare, Detroit and Minneapolis. But it cancelled only 0.74% of flights against 5.54% in the surrounding weeks. A major storm arrived the following weekend and landed in the comparison window instead.
Travellers who flew over MLK 2026 dodged it by seven days.
The winners were the familiar ones: Alaska and Southwest, with their western and southern networks, ran the weekend well above the national figure, and JetBlue ran lowest.
Presidents Day weekend
During the holidayNormal weeks either side
55.0%90.0%
All US flights, Friday to Monday. Normal weeks are the two weeks either side of the window. Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
The pattern repeats a month later. The 2023 weekend ran 82.0%, 1.5 points better than normal. The 2026 weekend ran 78.2%, 2.4 points worse, with the Monday the weakest day. 2024 was 5.8 points worse, almost all of it on the Friday and Saturday.
The 2025 weekend ran 64.1% on time against 82.4%, and cancelled 3.19% against 1.09%. The Sunday was the worst day, with the Monday not far behind. This time the damage ran up the East Coast and across the Great Lakes: Detroit, Boston, JFK, LaGuardia and Atlanta all had fewer than half their departures on time over the four days, and Washington National, at about half, cancelled roughly one flight in six. Los Angeles, San Francisco and Honolulu ran close to normal. That is consistent with the winter storm that crossed the eastern half of the country in mid-February 2025.
The airlines that suffered most were the ones concentrated in the affected airports. PSA Airlines, the American Eagle regional carrier whose biggest bases include Charlotte and Washington National, cancelled nearly a fifth of its flights; Republic more than a tenth; JetBlue had half its flights late. Southwest and Alaska, with more western flying, came through far better.
Why these weekends are a lottery
Neither holiday adds much traffic. The windows carried roughly the same number of flights per day as the normal weeks around them, with Presidents Day a little heavier. There is no Thanksgiving-style surge that overloads the system. What they share is the calendar: mid-January and mid-February are the core of the winter storm season, and a four-day window is long enough to catch a whole storm system as it crosses the country.
The months themselves are not bad. Nationally, January 2026 ran 79.2% on time and February 2026 80.2%, both above the 77.3% average for the full year from September 2025 to August 2026. Yet January 2026 also had the year's highest national cancellation rate, and it was concentrated at Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington National rather than in the snow belt. Of all the winter figures in the file, that is the one I would not have guessed. Winter in this data is mostly good days punctuated by a few very bad ones, and the long weekends are simply four days drawn from that distribution. Most draws are fine. The January and February guides cover those months in full. The winter storm guide explains how a single storm day fails.
US average 79.2%
55.0%95.0%
Flights departing each airport in January 2026. The dashed line is the national January figure. Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
The airport map for a winter weekend is the one this chart shows. In January 2026 Detroit (64.8%) and O'Hare (67.4%) sat at the bottom, and California's secondary airports and Houston Hobby (88.0%) at the top. February's weak end mixed the northern fields, Washington National and Boston among them, with Florida airports at the height of their season.
The ski trip problem
Both weekends are peak ski weekends, and mountain routes have their own winter risk on top of the hub's. On the O'Hare to Aspen route, January flights ran 49.2% on time and February 49.7%; the Denver to Aspen route cancelled 5.11% of its flights across the year. A long weekend has no spare day for a cancelled mountain leg. If I had to be on the slopes on Saturday morning, I would fly the mountain leg on Thursday. The ski country guide ranks the routes in.
How I would book a winter long weekend
Fly on Friday morning, return on Monday morning. In both bad years the evening windows ran worst. The first wave of the day ran far better than the rest of the day on each disaster weekend, as it does every day.
Connect west. Phoenix and Salt Lake City ran well above the national figure on both disaster weekends. Houston is less of a refuge than it looks: fine in 2025, it cancelled heavily in 2024 when the cold reached Texas. A non-stop beats any connection.
Watch the forecast from Wednesday. Airlines issue travel waivers ahead of a named storm. Moving the trip a day earlier, for free, is the best protection available, and it is only available before the storm arrives.
Keep Tuesday free. A storm that cancels Monday's flights leaves a backlog, and on a long weekend the seats home are already sold. A trip that needs you back at work on Tuesday morning is one missed Monday flight away from failing.
Check the winter holiday pages: MLK weekend · Presidents Day weekend · O'Hare in January · Detroit in January · Compare any US route