US Airline Delay Statistics – Analyzed by TravelFreak

Key US Airline Delay Statistics

• Most airline delays in 2022-2023 had been brought on by the airline, not unhealthy climate, closed runways, or air site visitors controllers.
• Over a 3rd of delayed flights are brought on by a series response of delays for an plane earlier in its journey.
• Frontier is the most-delayed airline, with practically 35% of flights departing late in 2023.
• Republic Airline had the fewest delays in 2023: solely 12% of Republic flights had been over quarter-hour late.
• The Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Worldwide Airport (FLL) is the worst main airport for canceled or delayed flights. Over a 3rd of flights from FLL had been delayed or canceled in 2023.
• The Minneapolis-St. Paul Worldwide Airport (MSN) was the very best main airport for delayed flights, with over 80% of flights leaving on time.
• Small regional airports in Idaho and Montana have the very best on-time efficiency within the nation.
• Mississippi is the state with the bottom delay share, at simply 14%.
• Delaware had an abysmal 55% of flights delayed in 2022, although no knowledge is accessible for 2023.

Airline Delay Causes

Beginning in 2003, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics started requiring main airways to report the explanation for delayed flights. Every delayed flight is assigned a code referring to one among 5 delay causes.

Listed here are the definitions of the delay causes in line with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics:

• CarrierDelay: The reason for the cancellation or delay was resulting from circumstances throughout the airline’s management (e.g. upkeep or crew issues, plane cleansing, baggage loading, fueling, and so on.).
• WeatherDelay: Vital meteorological circumstances (precise or forecasted) that, within the judgment of the provider, delays or prevents the operation of a flight, resembling a twister, blizzard, or hurricane.
• NASDelay: Delays and cancellations attributable to the nationwide aviation system that check with a broad set of circumstances, resembling non-extreme climate circumstances, airport operations, heavy site visitors quantity, and air site visitors management.
• LateAircraftDelay: A earlier flight with the identical plane arrived late, inflicting the current flight to depart late.
• SecurityDelay: Delays or cancellations brought on by evacuation of a terminal or concourse, re-boarding of plane due to safety breach, inoperative screening gear, and/or lengthy traces in extra of 29 minutes at screening areas.

Moreover, because the NAS class is kind of broad, it’s divided into extra particular causes:

• Climate: Non-emergency weather-caused delays
• Quantity: Delays brought on by air site visitors controllers as a result of quantity of flights
• Tools: Delays brought on by issues with gear
• Closed Runway: Delays brought on by a runway closed resulting from development or site visitors management causes
• Different: All different delays associated to the NAS and air site visitors management

For this report, I broke out every delay trigger by share. I mixed all emergency and non-emergency climate delays underneath one class for simplicity.

Observe that the desk under solely contains delays, not canceled or diverted flight operations.

Curiously, in 2023 the most typical trigger for delayed flight departure was the plane arriving late. Primarily, arrival delays delayed the subsequent flight.

Admittedly, this isn’t a really satisfying reply, as a result of it doesn’t instantly point out a root trigger.

What this exhibits, although, is the domino impact of flight delays. One late arrival delays the subsequent flight departure, which results in one other delayed arrival, and so forth. Each single delay has detrimental impacts down the road.

It’s a honest assumption then, that each flight that was delayed by an plane arriving late will be attributed to one of many different causes farther again within the plane’s itinerary.

Airways wish to cite climate circumstances or different points outdoors their management because the causes of flight delays, however in actuality, the most typical root trigger is the airline itself. Accounting for 37.4% of flight delays in 2022 and 33.3% in 2023, air provider points trigger extra delays than all different root causes mixed (excluding late arrivals as a root trigger).

Sadly, there isn’t concrete knowledge specifying what precisely airways did to trigger these delays, solely that the airline is accountable. Particular causes could embrace staffing shortages, plane upkeep, or delays in boarding passengers.

The important thing takeaway is that almost all of delays—these brought on by air provider operations and by the domino impact of arrival delays—are preventable and are inside airways’ management.

Flight Delay Statistics by Airline

All US airways with greater than 0.5% of the market share are legally required to report on-time efficiency, delay occasions, and delay causes for each flight.

The chart under exhibits the chances of flights which are on time, delayed, or canceled by every airline in 2022 and 2023.

Throughout all home flights, 24.1% had been delayed or canceled in 2023 (with delayed being outlined as departing quarter-hour or extra after the scheduled time). The general common departure time was 14.43 minutes after the scheduled time.

Most On-Time Airline: Republic Airline

Republic Airline has the very best flight-on-time efficiency of all main US carriers in 2023. With solely 11.9% of flights departing late, Republic Airline performs about 10% higher than the nationwide common. That could be a notable enchancment from 2022, when Republic had 15.8% of flights delayed.

Republic Airline flights additionally depart 10 minutes sooner than common, solely 4.67 minutes after the scheduled time.

Curiously, although it has the very best on-time departure fee, Republic has the worst flight cancellation fee, with 3.32% of flights canceled in 2023.

Most Delayed Airline: Frontier Airways

Frontier is the worst performer. A dismal 34.9% of Frontier home flights departed late in 2023. Meaning properly over a 3rd of Frontier flights both depart greater than quarter-hour late or are canceled. Frontier’s common flight departure time is 29.43 minutes after the scheduled time.

Flight Delays in Massive vs Small Airways

It’s attention-grabbing that the highest 5 airways for on-time share in 2023 are all fairly small, with lower than 3% of the market share. All however SkyWest have lower than 1.5% of the market share.

The worst performers (Frontier, JetBlue, and Spirit) are additionally on the smaller finish, although bigger than the airways within the high on-time rankings.

The “Huge 4” US airways (Delta Air Traces, American Airways, United Airways, and Southwest Airways) are throughout the center of the pack. Maybe that’s solely logical although. As a result of massive air carriers function a large quantity of flights, resulting from ideas of scale, their efficiency is certain to even out nearer to the nationwide common.

However, smaller airways usually tend to be outliers just because they don’t have the identical quantity and variety of flights.

Of the Huge 4, Delta Air Traces carried out finest with 78.6% of home flights operated by Delta departing on time. Delta additionally has one of many lowest charges for flight cancellations, simply 1.41%.

The fifth-largest airline within the nation by income, Alaska Airways is the most important provider to have an on-time fee higher than 80% in 2023.

Price range Airways and Delays

Maybe unsurprisingly, finances airways carry out worse relating to delayed flights. The underside 4 in 2023—Southwest Airways, Spirit Airways, JetBlue Airways, and Frontier Airways—are all lower-cost carriers.

There are numerous explanations for why finances airways have extra delays. These embrace staffing points, inadequate upkeep, and fewer environment friendly operations.

However, there’s proof that finances airways have an general constructive affect on the punctuality of an airport.

A study by Ha V. Pham at the University of Virginia Department of Economics discovered that airports with the very best share of low-cost airline flights have shorter delay occasions.

I’ll say that one other manner. If an airport has extra flights from finances airways, the typical delay time for all flights from that airport is decrease.

This will appear counterintuitive, however Pham’s analysis means that the quick-turnaround method of finances carriers frees up airport assets for different airways to make use of.

Airline Delay Statistics by Airport

Variations in airline delays between totally different airports may present key insights. Because it seems, there’s an excellent bigger distinction in on-time efficiency between airports than between airways.

Airports with the Most Flight Delays

The desk under lists the 5 US airports with the worst on-time arrival charges in 2023. This evaluation doesn’t take diverted flights under consideration, however the share of flights diverted is sufficiently small to be non-significant.

The primary level to notice with the info above is that a lot of the airports with the worst on-time efficiency are smaller regional airports. As with airways, this is sensible contemplating the smaller scale of those airports.

With so few flights, small regional airports usually tend to be outliers. Actually, we’ll see that essentially the most on-time airports are additionally smaller regional ones. A bigger airport, however, merely has extra quantity to common out.

The exception right here is the Fort Lauderdale Hollywood Worldwide Airport, which had 33.1% of its flights delayed and a pair of.6% canceled up to now in 2023. The truth that this main worldwide airport ranks with these smaller outliers is placing.

Once we take a look at the worst delay percentages solely amongst main worldwide airports, we will see that Fort Lauderdale had a noticeably decrease on-time share. Different main airports with excessive delay charges embrace Orlando, Denver, Baltimore, and Las Vegas.

Airports with the Fewest Flight Delays

When airports with the fewest delays, small regional airports once more present up because the outliers, with delay charges as little as 2.8%. I’ve included tables under each for absolutely the highest on-time share in addition to main airports with the very best on-time share.

Curiously, 4 out of 5 of essentially the most on-time airports within the nation are small regional airports in Idaho and Montana. Probably the most on-time main airports, however, should not concentrated in anybody area.

The Pocatello Regional Airport has the very best on-time efficiency within the nation, with simply 2.8% of flights delayed in 2023. It additionally has a powerful cancellation report, with no flight cancellations in any respect in 2023 up to now.

Contemplating solely bigger airports, the outcomes are far much less dramatic. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Worldwide Airport had the very best on-time efficiency of any main airport in 2023. 17.3% of flights had been delayed, and 1.8% had been canceled.

That’s solely a 5-point distinction from the nationwide common of twenty-two.4% of flights delayed. Minneapolis had extra canceled flights on common: the nationwide common is 1.7%.

These outcomes point out that smaller airports have way more capability to dramatically enhance efficiency than worldwide airports with bigger flight volumes.

That is sensible contemplating that airways trigger much more delays than airport operations. Smaller airports usually have a small variety of totally different airways working flights. Bigger airports usually have many extra airways working, which suggests poor airline efficiency will overpower efforts made by the airport towards punctuality to a big extent.

Airline Delay Statistics by State/Territory

Main variations in on-time efficiency will also be seen between totally different states. The desk under exhibits the proportion of flights delayed in every US state or territory in 2022 and 2023.

Mississippi, Idaho, Alaska, Oregon, and Kansas all carried out constantly properly in 2022 and 2023 for on-time flights. The highest states for on-time flights are principally states with much less air site visitors quantity and decrease populations general.

Unsurprisingly, most of the states that rank worst for delays even have a significant airport that is among the most delayed within the nation. For instance: The Baltimore, MD; Denver, CO; and Las Vegas, NV airports are all among the many most delayed main airports. Consequently, Maryland, Colorado, and Nevada rank as among the most delayed states.

Delaware solely has one comparatively small regional airport (the Wilmington Airport), however delays in Delaware are far worse than in every other state, with over 55% of flights being delayed in 2022.

Sources and Methodology

All knowledge for this report come from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) Reporting Service On-Time Efficiency Database, which incorporates knowledge from 1987 as much as the current. This database contains knowledge organized by origin and vacation spot airport, date, and airline. The reported knowledge contains scheduled and precise departure and arrival occasions, canceled and diverted flights, taxi-out and taxi-in occasions, causes of delay and cancellation, air time, and continuous distance.

I accessed this knowledge utilizing the BTS online data tables on October 18, 2023.

Information Classes and Variables

For this report I queried the BTS knowledge tables based mostly on the next classes for filtering and sorting:

• Reporting_Airline: a singular provider code indicating every airline
• OriginAirportID: an identification quantity assigned by US DOT to determine a singular airport—for the origin
• DestAirportID: an identification quantity assigned by US DOT to determine a singular airport—for the vacation spot
• OriginState: the identify and state code of the origin state or US territory

Inside every filtering class, I accessed the next variables for evaluation.

• PctDepOntime: a share of exits leaving inside quarter-hour of the scheduled time
• DepDelay15: an indicator of delayed departure the place over quarter-hour late is taken into account delayed—1 for delayed and 0 for not delayed
• DepDelayMinutes: distinction in minutes between scheduled and precise departure time—early departures set to 0
• Flights: variety of flights inside a class
• Canceled: variety of canceled flights inside a class
• Cancellation Code: a quantity indicating the reason for delay

Evaluation

After I pulled the info from the BTS tables, I carried out all evaluation, group, and calculations to find out the ultimate outcomes.

The next values had been calculated based mostly on the out there knowledge in every class:

• Proportion of flights that had been delayed
• Proportion of flights that had been canceled
• Mixed share of utmost climate delays and NAS climate delays
• Particular person general share of delays from particular person NAS causes

For delay causes, I mixed “excessive climate delays” and NAS-related climate delays underneath one class to provide an correct illustration of all weather-related delays.

I organized and sorted the calculated outcomes to search out essentially the most and least delayed airways, airports, and states. Because the outlying outcomes for airports had been small regional airports, I additionally filtered to search out essentially the most and least delayed main worldwide airports.