What we found
4,177,570 flights · 22 days
Who is really to blame when your flight is late
The United States publishes the cause of every delay split into five columns. But one of them — «the aircraft arrived late from its previous flight», 42.1 % of the total — is not a cause: it is a consequence. If that aircraft was held up by a storm, the storm vanishes from the table.
So we chased the domino backwards, aircraft by aircraft, to the start. This is the difference:
| as published | true root cause | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| the airline | 30.8 % | 42.2 % | |
| the system — air traffic control, runways | 20.3 % | 30.4 % | |
| no cause declared | — | 9.6 % | |
| weather | 6.7 % | 9.2 % | |
| the chain was broken | — | 8.4 % | |
| security | 0.1 % | 0.2 % | |
| the aircraft arrived late from its previous flight | 42.1 % | — |
On-time performance by airline
Official Brazilian data. «On time» means it left within 15 minutes, the criterion every authority uses.
| airline | on time | cancelled | flights |
|---|---|---|---|
| ACN | 93.3 % ±1.6 | 13.7 % | 935 |
| Gol Transportes Aéreos | 88.2 % ±0.4 | 1.6 % | 22,538 |
| Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras | 87.7 % ±0.4 | 1.9 % | 23,125 |
| Copa Airlines | 83.6 % ±2.4 | 1.1 % | 927 |
| LATAM Brasil | 79.5 % ±0.5 | 1.2 % | 26,333 |
| LATAM Airlines | 76.6 % ±2.1 | 0.4 % | 1,532 |
| Sky Airline | 73.7 % ±3.7 | 2.7 % | 528 |
| Aerolíneas Argentinas | 63.6 % ±3.8 | 3.8 % | 618 |
| TAP Express | 62.5 % ±3.1 | 1.1 % | 938 |
The ± is the 95 % margin: with few flights measured, the real figure may sit well above or below.
Where these numbers come from
adsb.lol — posiciones ADS-B (ODbL) · ANAC Argentina — movimientos (CC BY 4.0) · ANAC Brasil — VRA · BTS Estados Unidos — On-Time Performance (dominio público) · OurAirports · Wikidata (CC0)