Which Airports Have The Longest Taxi Times? 

I once departed Amsterdam Schiphol using the Polderbaan. Usually, aircraft must cross over the adjacent parallel runway to reach the Polderbaan. That adjacent runway was really busy. Our aircraft had to therefore go around that runway instead of crossing over. That added even more time. Taxi was therefore at least 20 minutes. I am not complaining though. I enjoyed it!

I always tell my friend from Amsterdam that when you fly into Schiphol you actually land in Belgium and taxi to The Netherlands. Flights to London frequently end up with the taxi out to the runway being longer than the flight itself.

Recently Toronto Pearson International, average taxi time is now 20 mins. Traffic has picked up quite a bit and the airport is looking to add more new airlines by the summer time.

Took a flight out of Beijing , we were finally cleared to take off after 40 minutes taxiing that felt an eternity for everyone on board. Even the pilots, who requested the flight attendants to prepare for ... landing !

European airports have lower taxi out times due to slot constraints, flow control and departure runway sequencing. This has the side effect of reducing the capacity somewhat, but probably still worth it. Taxi in times are mostly influenced by gate capacity and planning.

YAY Thanks for mentioning Bradley!!!

It was probably 2005 when I was travelling to Kenya that I had a long taxi to the runway in Schipol. Not 100% certain it was that flight but I know it was at Schipol. I also remember being on an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin in Schipol another time and we were boarded and the door was closed but the plane was sitting at the gate waiting for 20 minutes for a short thunder storm to pass before we could taxi to the runway. The longest queue for a runway I experienced was February 2020 just before the pandemic struck. I was flying locally from Dublin to Kerry and there was a queue of about 10 to 12 planes for the one runway and we were two from the back in 8th or 10th.

From my experience, departing from Schipol using Polderbaan meant a taxi time of almost 45 minutes. It was horrible.

I once landed at Istanbul's new airport on runway 35R (if I remember correctly) and the taxi time was probably like 30 minutes long because we didn't just vacate right towards the airport building, but we vacated left and crossed 35L so we had to do a huge loop. Plus there was a lot of traffic at that time. Felt like an eternity but I'm not complaining, I actually enjoyed plane spotting some aircraft!

By far the worst taxi times i've experienced was that brief period around 1999/200 at LGA in NYC they lifted slots controls on the airlines. An hour to an hour and half was the common wait time to get off ground from pushback. I just started taking the train to Boston back in those days since it was just a quick with all the airport issues of lines, taxi time etc.

Bogotá (SKBO) is right on the spot, although it can take over 25 minutes if you are departing between 5 an 7am due to weather.

On the other hand, the large airport with the shortest taxiing time is likely Madrid Barajas (LEMD). The terminals are in a central hub with two sets of parallel runways radiating out of it. Parallel landings and takeoffs are possible in all conditions, with the start of each runway being close to the terminals. Look at the map of that airport really speaks for itself.

I’m surprised that MEX has that long of a taxi time. My visits had relatively short taxi times of 10-15 minutes meanwhile going to runway 8/26 at DEN feels like taking a road trip to Wyoming from how long and faraway it feels from the gates.

When you have a window seat in a aircraft & using the Polderbaan (Amsterdam Schiphol airport), specially at daytime, I am always fascinated by the amount of plane traffic on the Polderbaan, it never bored me & I love Amsterdam Schiphol airport, good piece of information & I am a subscriber, keep up the good work ******!!!!!!!!.

I had an hour and a half taxi at TPA (Tampa). That one was brutal, to the point we started getting drinks served before takeoff

I have flown to/from Doha Hamad Intl and Mumbai airport. The most taxiing time took me at Mumbai airport which took about 18-19minutes

Taxi out at Logan Airport (Boston) is usually pretty quick, id say around 10 minutes or so. Boston however is the longest taxi out ive ever experienced though. We left the gate on time headed to EWR to catch a connecting flight to Shannon Ireland. After pushback we just sat on the tarmac for 10 minutes until we started moving, then were placed in a holding area for 40 minutes. Finally we were released from the holding area and got in line for takeoff, however there were about 12 planes ahead of us. New York air traffic control I guess put a ground hold on us due to heavy traffic and when they released us we had a 10 minute window to get airborne. We missed the window, and had to taxi back to the gate to refuel. We did not deplane and refueling took about 15 minutes. Pushback again and back to the holding area, this time only for 20 minutes. When they released us this time we had a much larger window to get airborne and were able to no problem. In all from our initial push back to wheels up was an hour and 45 minutes. We had to hold over Long Island for about 20 minutes before we could land finally. We managed to arrive only 90 minutes late and i remember taxi in was really quick. Flight attendants announced about 6 connecting flight numbers and for everyone to remain seated until passengers connecting to those flights deplaned. EWR is a huge airport and by chance our connecting flight was only a few gates away. We were the last ones on board and the doors closed behind us. I will never connect in New York again!!

There's some "2019/2010" near the end of the video

If you depart from the old domestic terminal at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia and you have to go to the furthest runway (depending on wind conditions), it also feels like you're going to drive to your destination. At one point one of my friends went "we're on an island. how far can we go before we drive into the sea?"

I've experienced taxiing in and out of Tokyo Narita and it was like 20 minutes on average.

PHL (Home Airport), ORD (layover only), JFK, MIA (layover only). Surprised TPA, MCO, BOS (layover only) weren't mentioned. The only foreign airports I've flown into are MAD (newest airport cred) and ZRH, along with a few smaller airports in the midwest since I have family in the Evansville area (EVV, IND, BNA, CVG, I think SDF too). I think I did Aviation Merit Badge at Brandywine (a GA airport)-could be another GA airport in that area. Might be going through DeGaulle and/or Schipol soon tho

Had a 15 minute taxi last week from terminal to polderbaan. Was fun!

Had a 32 minute taxi at KBP on a Qatar Airways A320 to DOH. For some reason we departed from 36R instead of the much closer 36L.

From memory... Schiphol (being Dutch), including several times the Polderbaan. Also on the list: Mexico City, Johannesburg, Cancun, Tokyo Narita, Frankfurt, London Heathrow.

once i flew to Vancover (YVR). we sat on the taxiway for 4 hours, returned to gate, flight cancled and left 32 hours later to dfw.

My personal experiences at CLT, Charlotte, are the longest, but they have a high standard deviation. Taxi times are occasionally less than five minutes but can easily be 30-40 minutes. At O'Hare, JFK, Dallas, and Atlanta the taxiways circle the terminal facilities. At Charlotte they were built in a way that incoming and outgoing aircraft need to share the same taxiways, often having to wait for others to pass. Also, at Charlotte you have to cross active runways to taxi from their farthest out runway, often resulting in a wait for landing and taking off aircraft.

I usually fly out of BDL (Bradley International) as it is about an hour and thirty minutes from my house, the taxi time from the gate to RWY24 for example is like under at least 5 ish minutes, for RWY06 it’s almost the same but about 5.5 minutes ish, but for RWY33 is right near by the gates and is like easily under a few minutes. I’ve flown in and out of JFK, ORD, MSP, DTW, HPN, MCO, and LAS before and it feels like it takes forever to get from the gate to the runway, and from the runway to the gate. (HPN is White Plains btw)

I expected DEN to be higher on the list. But maybe it’s better designed than I thought.

The cover photo on my channel is from after taking off from the Polderbaan runway (36L) out of Schipol heading to Birmingham BHX. Polderbaan is also planespotter heaven because there is public path that runs parallel to the runway on the western perimeter. I used to cycle there all the time when I lived in Haarlem for a bit.

Taxiing at mumbai when there is a rush can take 30+ mins because of it's single operational runway. I remember a flight that was supposed to land at my destination airport at 11:30 a.m. landed at 12:00 because of taxiing

Mostly the time is queuing for departure take-off, looks very few time used for arrival flights. But sometimes, airport with twin-runways with mid-field layout and using separate mode, the taxi-time will more, due to the aircraft need to cross the mid-field for gate/departure runway.

Once I landed in FRA on an OZ A380. It did not take longer than 15min from touchdown till i was at the train station (though no checked bags). Most annoying taxiing is probably at the new IST airport. It just takes forever…

New York City (JFK), Chicago/O’Hare, Atlanta, and Los Angeles/LAX.

I have been in Ohare, Philadelphia, Miami, and Atlanta in US, Bangalore in India and SJO here in Costa Rica, however the longest taxi/wait was in London Heathrow.

I'd like to see a breakdown between long travel distances to runways and time spent queuing up at the end of the runway. My plane was once 23rd in line to take off at Newark, waited 45 minutes.

Your pronunciations are always on point

Surprised Atlanta has a shorter taxing time given it’s been the busiest airport. Better designed than I thought.

Would be interesting to see the difference between taxi-out vs taxi-in times. At ORD, I’ve always had pretty quick taxi-out times, but taxi-in times are always much higher. Sometimes getting over 20-25 mins. I think this mostly has to do with the takeoff runway being between the arrivals and the arrivals runways being farther from the terminals.

Does this taxi time ranking only account for the taxi distance or also for the average queuing time, de-icing etc?

I have been to Manila, Singapore, Malaysia (KUL), Frankfurt, Dubai, riyadh, Jeddah, Hongkong international, Spain and in Paris-CDG :)

Love your spanish accent !!

We once waited for an hour at dxb for a takeoff slot after our gate changed, somehow affecting our takeoff slot. Walking to to the new gate alone took over 20min walking there😭😭😭

Saw the title and instantly said "Toronto". Haven't even watched the video yet 😂

I've experienced some really long taxiing in São Paulo (GRU) and Ciudad de México (MEX).

On a flight from Atlanta to Pittsburg in 1984, the captain announced “contrary to what you may be thinking, we are NOT driving to Pittsburg”. Well, it was long enough that I missed my connection in Toronto and ended up,sleeping on an Terminal bench. . .

The new runway at Schiphol is a nightmare to land on if you have a tight connection. It takes 15-20 minutes to taxi to the terminal. I've had connections of under an hour there several times. It's always nerve racking, especially if you have to go through passport control.

Once I had to sit in a line for the runway at Philadelphia for 4 hours (what I’m really saying is I gotta plane spot for 4 hours;))

a few years ago my mom was in china for work and on her flight back to toronto she sat on the tarmac at PEK for at least an hour because of traffic

I live in banglore and have flown in or out of KIA airport 4-5 times. The taxi times are quite long in KIA.

At San Francisco International Airport the taxi time is much longer at 12 pm than 12 am since there are more flights coming out of the airport at 12 pm than 12 am.

Interesting! but... I want to know which are the fastest international airport in terms of taxing 😁

AXOT can be improved by using pre-departure sequencing

I've been on the 3 mexican airports you mentioned, the taxi time is not that big, it depends on the runway you land at, there is one runway in Cancun that is really away from the airport, On MMMX the problem is the hold short time on the runways, still taxi takes time due traffic and on Guadalajara, I don't really remember when I flew in there, it was a long ago

Times are gate to runway? so pushback and engine start included?

another good reason to shift some routes to HST. speacially in europe

Odd. I had my worst ever time to gate experience at CDG and actively have avoided flights to the airport ever since.

I'm surprised SIN is only 16min... I swear it was way way longer when I depart from SIN

its kinda strange about polderbaan. as we can see theres a parralel runway which is much closer to the gates, but for some reason, the polderbaan gets more traffic than the other runway, despite being parralel and so should both be same conditions

Was at Newark int'l once enroute to San Diego and we had a taxi time of around 1hour! Overall not a great experience in Newark; the airport felt old and bland and commuting there was very uncomfortable. Although this was in 2018 so hopefully the airports in better shape as of today!

CDG taxis are the fastest I've ever witnessed. I flew in on AF A380, and fly in as cabin crew on SQ, and the planes are literally speeding. Love it.

Now I finally got my facts correct. Because I am from Singapore and everytime we use Changi airport, i realized like yes our departure is at 10.30pm. 11pm im still taxiing across the airport. Im like what, we are still on the ground ahahaha. Then if you take Singapore airlines, they will travel from T3 to the new runway omg that shit is a killer. Ill be like halfway through a movie and realized we just queued for the runway ahaha.

Use to dislike how YEG wasn’t as busy as YYC, but I do enjoy the short taxi times

I think every time I flown out of LAX TBIT the average taxiing time is around 20 min.

Even with Polderbaan in AMS I never experienced long taxi times. That runway is a compromise between taxi times, parallel operations and local requirements.

Soundtrack name for the first few minutes?

I'm surprised that Cairo's not on this list.

I thought BOM would also be included since it uses only one of it is two runways...

That's interesting, I've always thought SFO was quick and IAH and DFW were slow AF loll

Defeating the object of supersonic travel.

Minneapolis yesterday…

When taxi lines gets long, I guess the wait time will be longer.

The polderbaan at schiphol is super annoying to land at....

Chicago and Canada I can understand some due to snow and deicing.

I live in Trinidad and Tobago which the longest taxi time I ever took was like 3minutes

Do planes need to social distance now?

Haneda is HND, while HAN is for Hanoi

I landed/took off four f****** times from that stupid runway during my transfer in Amsterdam. Once okay... but they seem to always choose my flights for that stupid runway.

u nailed the name at 4:19, made u seem Mexican is ur first language😂

I'm gonna bet the taxi times at Moscow's airports are down considerably now.

I have taxied in and out of Delhi and it takes about 25 minutes

Chinese airlines received home boy priority in taxing, landing and take off. So they managed to save times.

Delhi tops the chart 28min, I thought AMS was bad when I was there , Paris was relatively fast, why London Heathrow is not on the list.

Madrid Barajas is horrible when they are on Southern runways 🤮 From terminal 1 it's about a 40 min taxi

Mexico can be a lucky 8 minute taxi to 55 minutes, early morning and late evening the less, at noon the most

Hello ,I am from india onces i taxied out to the runway in 2 minutes at the Indira Gandhi International Airport. Nowhere near the average time of 20.9 min 6:30

for me the longest time was in Amsterdam on the Polderbaan

Arriving at Heathrow was the worst ever! I was on a BA flight from ORD, and when we landed (circa 2002) after a 9-hour flight, the airport didn't have a gate ready for us. We sat on the tarmac for close to an hour, just waiting for a gate. I understand the new BA terminal has solved most of those problems.

Consistently longest I’ve experienced in IST

I've been to San Jose and am baffled at how a relatively small airport with a single runway can have such crazy taxi times. When it comes to light airplanes Victoria International CYYJ has notoriously long taxi times, with most GA infrastucture at one end of the airport and the usual active runway at the other end.

LAX-ATL-EWR

Charles de Gaulle is the worst airport I've ever been to, whether we're talking about taxing times or organization.

Montreal-Trudeau 17 minutes to the gate

5km is way too far ! What happens in the event an aircraft has to return to the gate ? 10km round trip ! Not good at all……

For me JFK, CLT and LHR. All over 1 hour.

The Africa airport is words are covered with franfort

When the Polderbaan runway was built, there was also plans to build a new terminal next to it. Thats why theres a big plot of land next to it.

3:51 pronounced Guarulhos wrong

Haneda is HND! 🙃

The answer is KCLT

Small error check. You wrote Paris twice. Once also for they African airport. No biggie, just fyi…if you even read this.