The FAA gather their info from a bunch of carriers, and break it all down into five basic categories of delay:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Air Carrier:<\/b> This is something under the airline\u2019s control like crewing, maintenance type issues. So that time you wanted a Starbucks coffee and the queue was really long and you held the flight up.<\/li>\n
- Extreme Weather:<\/b> We are talking the big, bad stuff like hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes\u2026 the things that shut airports for hours.<\/li>\n
- National Aviation System: <\/b>This is pretty broad and covers ATC, airport ops, high traffic volume sorts of situations. They also throw general weather into this (the stuff that airplanes and ATC should be able to deal with).<\/li>\n
- Late-arriving aircraft: <\/b>A knock on effect from a previous flight delay.<\/li>\n
- Security:<\/b> Broken X-ray machines, long queues because of that passenger who thought he could sneak a tiger on in his hand luggage type scenarios.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/airport-security-queues-2549508.jpg\")
Security is surprisingly the least to blame for delays<\/p><\/div>\n
Pick a month<\/h4>\n
Here come the statistics…<\/p>\n
In January 2021, 89.16% of flights were on time<\/strong> – which ain\u2019t bad, but ain\u2019t great. So, of the remaining 10.84%, what were the reasons for the delay?<\/p>\n
Air Carrier Delays<\/strong> are the big offender, checking in at 3.63%<\/strong>.\u00a0The airlines only have themselves to blame\u2026<\/p>\n
Although, NAS<\/strong> came in a close second with 3.6%<\/strong>.<\/p>\n
Then there was the knock-on effect of one late flight making the next flight late<\/strong>. This accounted for 1.94%<\/strong> of delays, with 1.17% because of previous cancellations and diversions.<\/p>\n
Extreme weather<\/strong> came in at just 0.46%<\/strong>, while security delays <\/strong>only resulted in 0.04%<\/strong> (probably because those passengers were just left behind).<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/Screen-Shot-2021-04-06-at-4.40.45-PM.png\")
The Stats for Jan<\/p><\/div>\n
Weathering the delays<\/h4>\n
Weather only accounts for 4% of delays<\/strong>, which might seem low, but remember we are talking \u2018extreme weather\u2019. Non-extreme weather should be manageable which is why “normal weather” causing delays falls under NAS.<\/p>\n
If we dig a bit deeper and take a snapshot look at a random month (we picked May 2019 because everything was fairly normal back then), then weather was the reason for 65.62% of NAS delays.<\/strong> That is a whopping 27,864 delayed flights or 1,822,469 minutes.<\/p>\n
Which airport is the worst?<\/h4>\n
Let’s take a look at the airports to look out for.<\/p>\n
- Extreme Weather:<\/b> We are talking the big, bad stuff like hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes\u2026 the things that shut airports for hours.<\/li>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ops.group\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/DFW-1024x683.jpg\")