neo and avek,

The times are only estimates by ATC. Those translate into reality about 3/4 of the time, from my experience.

And weather delays do not count in the ontime performance rankings.

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But on another level, there is a degree of fault with the airlines. They run small planes at high frequencies. In the more congested areas, that causes significant backups when the slightest thing goes wrong. It's like how a freeway can run at capacity, but if someone is stalled or there's a collision or the sun suddenly hits drivers in their eyes, everything breaks down and you have traffic jams.

Freeways would transport more people if they had more people per vehicle. The same applies to the runways and airspace. Naturally, it doesn't apply to the other side of the airport (checkin, boarding areas, etc.).

The fact is, airlines blaming the FAA for the delays is like people blaming the lack of freeway lanes for traffic jams. Study after study has shown that increasing the number of lanes only increases the number of cars, but has no real impact (other than short-term) at eliminating traffic congestion. The same applies to air traffic. If the FAA allows for more capacity, it will be filled by higher frequency of smaller aircraft. That's already been shown repeatedly as well.

It's time to stop that insanity, IMO. I'd far prefer that there be slot regulations at the airports than to have what we have today. And slots shouldn't be set up for 100% capacity, either. There needs to be breathing room so that weather doesn't cause multi-hour delays all the time. SFO, for example, should be set up for an average of about 45 flights per hour...maybe a little less. The delays would nearly disappear with that approach. At a cost to the airport and taxpayers of zero.

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Michael