A new study, compiled ironically by a company based in Bulgaria, has taken a deep dive into delayed arrivals on U.S. domestic flights, a situation that added up to passengers waiting an extra 1.5 million hours or 171 years last year.
The numbers, from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, were analyzed for SkyRefund, a company that helps travelers, mainly in Europe, collect compensation from airlines.
The top cause cited, covering 39.7% of the time, was airplanes arriving late from their previous assignment, causing delays to the next outbound flight. In some cases, that time could be made up, but what the survey studied was time between scheduled arrival and actual arrival, not delays in take-off.
In second at 31.83% is ‘air carrier delays,’ situations that are considered within an airline’s control, such as technical failures, staff shortages or slow baggage loading. Those delays have a domino effect, by causing delay to the next flight.
Third was disruption of the national aviation system at 21.4% of the delay. This covers delays caused by airports, air traffic control or avoidable weather delays. Fourth, at 6.94% is extreme weather and fifth, at 0.13% was security delays, when a plane or terminal was evacuated.
