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Albany International Airport: What the Real Numbers Say About Delays, Parking, and Timing Your Ride

Albany International Airport (ALB) is in the middle of its busiest stretch in years, a $100 million terminal expansion, and an on-time performance record that lags the national average — all at the same time. We pulled together the publicly available data on each of those three things, with sources, because none of it is currently collected in one place, and all three together are directly relevant if you're planning a pickup or drop-off at ALB.

ALB is having its busiest stretch on record

Albany International Airport said in its own Thanksgiving 2025 travel advisory that it was "experiencing one of its busiest years on record" and on track to surpass 1.5 million enplanements for 2025 — with CEO Peter Stuto noting the airport was looking forward to "safely connect[ing] families, friends and loved ones from the Capital Region and beyond" during the holiday surge.

The federal data backs that up. FAA financial-reporting data compiled by aviation analytics firm DWU Consulting puts ALB's FY2025 enplanements at 1,594,077, up from 1,507,130 in FY2024 — a 5.8% year-over-year increase. A separate BTS T-100 count (which only includes passenger-configured aircraft) puts calendar-year 2025 enplanements at 1,585,110, up 5.4% from 2024 and about 105% of pre-pandemic 2019 levels. Early-2025 numbers told the same story: ALB logged 604,437 enplanements from January through May 2025 alone, up 5.3% over the same months in 2024.

In plain terms: more people are flying out of ALB right now than at almost any point in the airport's history.

On-time performance is below the national average

More passengers moving through a facility that's historically run a bit behind schedule is worth knowing about before you book a pickup time. A Times Union analysis of five years of federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics data (November 2019 through November 2024, the most recent complete window available at publication) found that just over 77% of flights at ALB arrive on-time — meaning nearly 23% arrive more than 15 minutes late, the standard BTS definition of a delayed flight. That's below the 79.5% national average, and it trails Rochester's airport, which led New York's six busiest airports at 78.93% on-time. An earlier BTS-sourced annual snapshot (August 2021–July 2022, via a Stacker ranking) found a similar pattern: 72.47% on-time, with air-carrier delays (11.6%), late-arriving aircraft (7.7%), and cancellations (3.2%) as the leading causes.

That's not just a statistic. On Presidents Day 2025 (February 17), an Allegiant flight bound for the Fort Myers area sat on the ALB tarmac for six hours before being cancelled after a 10-plus-hour delay — a combination of weather, power outages, and staffing issues that the airline and airport both confirmed, and one that rippled into delays on other carriers that day too. Diana Martin, a Niskayuna resident and frequent business traveler quoted in the Times Union's reporting, said she now avoids booking early-morning and holiday flights out of ALB specifically because that's "when delays are most likely to happen."

Construction is adding real friction right now

Separately from on-time performance, ALB is also mid-construction on a $100 million main terminal expansion and a Concourse A rehabilitation project. Per the airport's own current traveler guidance: curbside traffic lanes are reduced, curbside parking is never permitted, and parking garages and lots (including the free cell-phone lot on Albany Shaker Road) are free for the first hour and are, in the airport's own words, "the best places to wait for arriving passengers." ALB's own travel tips go a step further, explicitly advising travelers to "consider using alternate transportation to reduce parking demand and speed up your arrival."

What this actually means for your ride

Put those three real, independently verifiable facts together — record passenger volume, a below-average on-time rate with a documented recent meltdown, and an airport that's currently telling people to use alternate transportation because of construction — and the practical takeaway is straightforward: this is a genuinely bad year to assume your flight will land on schedule or that parking and curbside pickup will be simple.

That's the exact gap door-to-door car service is built for. We track your actual flight, so a delay doesn't mean a missed pickup or a scramble to rebook — see our live flight status tool on the homepage. And because we're not circling for curbside space or hunting for parking, the current construction disruption doesn't touch your ride the way it touches a car you're driving yourself.

Sources

Figures current as of publication (Oct 2026) and sourced as noted above; flight data updates monthly and is subject to revision by the originating agencies. This is independent analysis by Albany Airport Taxi and Limo Service, not published or endorsed by Albany International Airport or the Albany County Airport Authority.