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 visitors controllers.
• Over a 3rd of delayed flights are brought on by a sequence response of delays for an plane earlier in its journey.
• Frontier is the most-delayed airline, with almost 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 most effective main airport for delayed flights, with over 80% of flights leaving on time.
• Small regional airports in Idaho and Montana have the most effective on-time efficiency within the nation.
• Mississippi is the state with the lowest delay share, at simply 14%.
• Delaware had an abysmal 55% of flights delayed in 2022, although no knowledge is offered 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 regarding one in every of 5 delay causes.

Listed below are the definitions of the delay causes in keeping with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics:

• CarrierDelay: The reason for the cancellation or delay was because of circumstances inside the airline’s management (e.g. upkeep or crew issues, plane cleaning, baggage loading, fueling, etc.).
• WeatherDelay: Vital meteorological circumstances (precise or forecasted) that, within the judgment of the service, delays or prevents the operation of a flight, such as a tornado, blizzard, or hurricane.
• NASDelay: Delays and cancellations attributable to the nationwide aviation system that discuss with a broad set of circumstances, such as non-extreme climate circumstances, airport operations, heavy visitors volume, and air 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 strains in extra of 29 minutes at screening areas.

Moreover, for the reason that NAS class is sort of broad, it’s divided into extra particular causes:

• Climate: Non-emergency weather-caused delays
• Volume: Delays brought on by air visitors controllers because of the volume of flights
• Tools: Delays brought on by issues with gear
• Closed Runway: Delays brought on by a runway closed because of development or visitors management causes
• Different: All different delays associated to the NAS and air visitors management

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

Word that the table under solely contains delays, not canceled or diverted flight operations.

Apparently, in 2023 essentially the most frequent cause for delayed flight departure was the plane arriving late. Basically, arrival delays delayed the subsequent flight.

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

What this reveals, 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 negative impacts down the road.

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

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

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

The important thing takeaway is that the vast majority of delays—these brought on by air service operations and by the domino impact of arrival delays—are preventable and are within 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 reveals the odds of flights which can be on time, delayed, or canceled by every airline in 2022 and 2023.

Throughout all domestic 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 most effective 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’s 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.

Apparently, though it has the most effective on-time departure charge, Republic has the worst flight cancellation charge, with 3.32% of flights canceled in 2023.

Most Delayed Airline: Frontier Airways

Frontier is the worst performer. A dismal 34.9% of Frontier domestic flights departed late in 2023. Which means nicely 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 Giant 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 Strains, 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 operate a large volume of flights, because of ideas of scale, their efficiency is sure to even out nearer to the nationwide common.

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

Of the Huge 4, Delta Air Strains carried out greatest with 78.6% of domestic 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 biggest service to have an on-time charge higher than 80% in 2023.

Funds Airways and Delays

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

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

Alternatively, there’s proof that finances airways have an general optimistic influence 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 method. If an airport has extra flights from finances airways, the common delay time for all flights from that airport is decrease.

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

Airline Delay Statistics by Airport

Variations in airline delays between totally different airports also can 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 table 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. In actual fact, we’ll see that essentially the most on-time airports are additionally smaller regional ones. A bigger airport, alternatively, merely has extra volume to common out.

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

Once we have 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 embody 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.

Apparently, 4 out of 5 of essentially the most on-time airports within the nation are small regional airports in Idaho and Montana. Essentially the most on-time main airports, alternatively, aren’t concentrated in anyone area.

The Pocatello Regional Airport has the most effective on-time efficiency within the nation, with simply 2.8% of flights delayed in 2023. It additionally has a formidable cancellation file, 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 most effective 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 rather more capacity to dramatically enhance efficiency than worldwide airports with bigger flight volumes.

That is sensible contemplating that airways cause way 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 implies 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 may also be seen between totally different states. The table under reveals the share of flights delayed in every US state or territory in 2022 and 2023.

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

Unsurprisingly, a lot of the states that rank worst for delays even have a serious 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 a few of essentially 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 Provider On-Time Efficiency Database, which incorporates knowledge from 1987 as much as the current. This database contains knowledge organized by origin and destination 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 non-stop 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 primarily based on the next classes for filtering and sorting:

• Reporting_Airline: a novel service code indicating every airline
• OriginAirportID: an identification number assigned by US DOT to establish a novel airport—for the origin
• DestAirportID: an identification number assigned by US DOT to establish a novel airport—for the destination
• OriginState: the identify and state code of the origin state or US territory

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

• PctDepOntime: a share of exits leaving within 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 within a class
• Canceled: variety of canceled flights within a class
• Cancellation Code: a number 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 primarily based on the accessible knowledge in every class:

• Share of flights that had been delayed
• Share of flights that had been canceled
• Mixed share of maximum climate delays and NAS climate delays
• Individual general share of delays from individual NAS causes

For delay causes, I mixed “excessive climate delays” and NAS-related climate delays below one class to present 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. For the reason that outlying outcomes for airports had been small regional airports, I additionally filtered to search out essentially the most and least delayed main worldwide airports.