I fly back and forth quite a bit LON-PMI (mostly BA LCY) and it seems like I'm always delayed by just under three hours. (Flight stats data.) This has happened four times this year (2h55m, 2h55m, 2h53m,and 2h34m) and yesterday (Vueling 2901 PMI-AMS) was also just under the three hour EU compensation threshold. All of these were due to technical problems.

1) Are the engineers told to speed up after two hours tinkering with the plane?
2) Does ATC give flights which are around 2h45m late priority to land from whatever holding pattern might exist? Yesterday's pilot flew the last fifteen minutes like a fighter jet.

Does anyone know the incidence of delays of 2.5-3 hours vs those of 3-3.5 hours? Or is this just a coincidence.

Thanks,

Monkville