Help with my kids homework
What flights regularly have departure that are over 1 hour delayed.
Can be anywhere in the world

Time to start looking at some JetBlue and Frontier flights!

AA displays on-time performance in the details page when you search for a flight.

Ok, joking aside, we can answer this question with data from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics. I see you're in England, but you say anywhere in the world and I live in the US and this is the only data I'm aware of, so it's the data I'm going to base my answer from.

I'm home now with a stable Internet connection so I can download the large export of their database for delays reported in November 2023 (the latest month with data).

https://www.transtats.bts.gov/ot_del...elaycause1.asp
https://www.transtats.bts.gov/DL_Sel...6_anzr=b0-gvzr
https://www.transtats.bts.gov/Tables...6_anzr=b0-gvzr

I'm using the Marketing Carrier database, not the Reporting Carrier database so that regional flights operated by Mesa, PSA, Envoy Air, etc show up as the mainline carrier, Delta, American, United, etc since I'm guessing the teacher won't recognize US regional airlines.

Not sure if the teacher is into the minutia, but I'm looking at arrival delays, not departure delays. A plane could leave late and still arrive on-time or early, but most people only care about whether they arrive late.

With all the details out of the way, the most delayed flight in Nov 2023 was a flight from Amarillo, TX (AMA) to Dallas / Fort Worth, Texas (DFW) on AA on Nov 14, 2023. Unfortunately the government doesn't provide flight numbers. The flight was delayed 3502 minutes or 58.36 hours! Yikes! Cause of the delay was Carrier Delay (so likely some maintenance issue or something). Aircraft was N834AW, an American mainline A319.

Found the flight on FlightAware. It was AA483.
https://www.flightaware.com/live/fli...010Z/KAMA/KDFW



To answer the actual question, flights that commonly have delays I removed all the flights that had a delay less than 60 minutes and ended up with a list of delays from 315 originating airports and 313 destination airports.

With 50 delays, FLL to ATL tops the list!

Here's the top 12 (a few airports were tied for 37, so I'm listing 12 instead of 10) -
FLL-ATL - 50 delays
LAS-LAX - 49 delays
MCO-PHL - 45 delays
MCO-EWR - 44 delays
LAX-LAS - 41 delays
ATL-FLL - 40 delays
MCO-ATL - 39 delays
PHL-MCO - 38 delays
SAN-LAS - 38 delays
ORD-LGA - 37 delays
EWR-MCO - 37 delays
PHL-CLT - 37 delays


Raw Data - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...rue&output=csv

Pivot Table - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...35&single=true
* Origin Airport on the Left, Destination Airport across the Top, so Cell B2 is DFW-ABE, 0 delays and Cell C2 is DFW-ABI, 7 delays.

EDIT

Digging into the data a little more, there were 50 delays on flights from FLL to ATL. Those delays were caused for the following reasons (some flights may be delayed for multiple reasons) -
Carrier Delay - 40
Weather Delay - 2
National Air System Delay (NAS) Delay - 31
Security Delay - 1
Late Arriving Aircraft - 36


More interesting, I was able to find flight numbers in the data. The flights with the largest number of delays in America in Nov 2023 -
AS66 - 19 Delays
OO5039 - 14 Delays
B6914 - 13 Delays
AS64 - 13 Delays
OO3735 - 13 Delays
OO4232 - 13 Delays
AS70 - 12 Delays
AS65 - 12 Delays
NK5 - 12 Delays
OO3116 - 12 Delays
MQ3779 - 12 Delays
B62465 - 11 Delays
B62466 - 11 Delays
NK981 - 11 Delays
NK299 - 11 Delays
NK1608 - 11 Delays
B6568 - 11 Delays
OO3068 - 11 Delays
NK298 - 10 Delays
NK226 - 10 Delays

The results are pretty fascinating! They don't match up with the airport list further up in the report. The first flight is in Alaska, the second one is a regional flight in Colorado, and finally the third is a flight up the East Coast from FLL to Westchester in New York. I made that joke about Frontier and JetBlue, but these results make Alaska, JetBlue, SkyWest and Spirit look bad!

Data -
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...21&single=true

The Alaska flights listed with flight numbers in the 60's are for the most part milk-run flights that serve small towns in southeast Alaska that otherwise wouldn't have jet service. Yes, they can be delayed due to weather and other reasons, e.g. a bear on the runway. But instead of making Alaska Air look bad, another way of looking at it is that Alaska has made a commitment to serve a number of small communities throughout the state that otherwise would not have service. Try getting to Yakutat on anyone else...

I forgot about the Milk Run even though I'd like to fly that some day, and didn't realize those flights were part of that. In that case, I'd expect delays!

EDIT

Here's what we're referring to with Milk Run, for those of you outside the US that are unfamiliar with Alaska Air.

https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-ai...lk-run-flight/

awesome work! thank you
Top Marks

Thank you!

Is late departure data not available
Is is not possible to find a list of flight numbers that statistically are over 1hour late departing?

The export includes late departure data and late arrival data, so you could complete the same exercise to find the flights that usually depart late. I just used late arrival because most people only care if they arrive late.

EC261 is technically based on late arrival, not late departure.

I'm not aware of an an international flight delay database. I'm not even sure who would collect that information - ICAO? IATA? And why? Being late isn't exactly something airlines want to boast about! Nobody does! Airlines in the US only report the data to the government because they are required to and other governments might have similar laws, so you might be able to find national data for specific countries.

I repeated the task with flights that departed at least 60 minutes late and as expected the results are different! Keep in mind some of these flights might have made up time in the air so they arrived less than 60 minutes late, which is why they don't appear in the data I posted last night.

Top 10 Routes with Highest Delay Count

FLL-ATL - 50 delays
LAX-LAS - 47 delays
MCO-EWR - 45 delays
MCO-PHL - 44 delays
ATL-FLL - 43 delays
FLL-EWR - 42 delays
EWR-MCO - 41 delays
DEN-LAS - 39 delays
DEN-ASE - 38 delays
LAX-JFK - 38 delays
SAN-LAS - 38 delays


Top 21 Flights with Highest Delay Count

OO5454 - 17 Delays
B61567 - 14 Delays
B6517 - 14 Delays
HA80 - 14 Delays
B62222 - 13 Delays
HA5 - 13 Delays
B61333 - 12 Delays
HA9 - 12 Delays
9E4857 - 12 Delays
9E5383 - 12 Delays
AS293 - 11 Delays
B61920 - 11 Delays
B6732 - 11 Delays
B62063 - 11 Delays
MQ3601 - 11 Delays
MQ4073 - 11 Delays
9E5165 - 11 Delays
9E5206 - 11 Delays
9E4827 - 11 Delays
9E5045 - 11 Delays
9E4813 - 11 Delays


Again, EC261 is based on arrival delays, not departure delays. If you depart 3hrs and 30 mins late, but arrive 2hrs 45mins late, you're not entitled to compensation.

If this doesn't work, then I don't know how to answer your question. Sorry!

EDIT
The flight with the largest departure delay was the same flight as the previous post - AA483. It departed 3518 minutes late and arrived 3502 minutes late.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240210...010Z/KAMA/KDFW

thanks so much , really impressive helping

Just start with flights out of Miami starting around 3pm. So ... much ... rain.

If seasonal there are several contenders. Year round, likely high altitude airports that have rapidly changing weather conditions and limited runway - maybe somewhere like Lukla in nepal due to weather conditions?