Why Are the People Waiting?

There are five recognized causes of flight delays. The first is severe weather. The second is a late arrival of the airplane into the airport from a previous flight. The third type is considered to be caused by circumstances within the carrier’s control such as issues with crew or maintenance. The forth type is due to the national aviation system (NAS) such as heavy volume, or non-extreme weather. The fifth type is security breach or problems with the security screening operations.

How long are they waiting?

We saw above that a typical flight delay averages about 30-40 minutes. While this may seem reasonable given the complexities of air travel, the effects on lost productivity are not negligable. In our sample month, December 2018, there were 500,000 recorded flights in the U.S. About 25% of the flights experienced a delay. If all these delays across the entire country are added up then the total is a very large number. In fact, these total accumulated delays can be several years long!

Where are they waiting?

The number of dealyed flights at any givien airport is rought proportional to the number of flights it handles. So the most delays occur at America’s largest airports. Major hub cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Denver experience a lot of delays. Many delays also occur in big airports near large cities including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C, Tampa, Miami, Houston, Pheonix, Las Vegas, Los Angelis and San Francisco.

When are they waiting?

The number of dealyed flights slowly increases though out the day. This is due to the accumulative effect of delays earlier in the day , as well as developing weather condtions. The increase peaks at about 5PM and then declines into the evening hours.

About this data:

Obtained from the publically available database maintained by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics. website: http://transtats.bts.gov