SOFIA, Bulgaria, Jan. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Delayed flights left American travelers waiting a combined 1.5 million hours, or 171 years in 2025, according to Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) data.
Legal tech-powered air passenger claims company, SkyRefund, analyzed data supplied by the BTS to reveal what caused these delays, and how long travelers spent waiting for them.
Their analysis looked at the latest available data for 2025, covering January to September of last year. By that point the BTS recorded that all delays, at all the airports in the country added up to 93,786,775 minutes.
A delay was recorded if a flight arrived more than fifteen minutes later than scheduled, and the total amount of time between the scheduled and actual arrival were added up to come to the 93-million-minute figure.
According to SkyRefund’s analysis, the number one reason flights were behind schedule last year was ‘late arriving aircraft’, being the reason for 39.7 percent of the time spent delayed, or 600,000 hours. Late arrivals mean that aircraft can quickly fall behind their scheduled cleaning, refueling or maintenance in a vicious cycle of hold-ups causing hold-ups.
The second most common reason for a flight delay, accounting for 31.83 percent of the time spent waiting for delays, or 497,000 hours, was ‘air carrier delays’. This is a category of delays, defined as any reason causing a delay that is within an airline’s control, such as a technical failure, staff delay, slow baggage loading, or anything else you could imagine.
Air carrier delays are also notable for being the primary cause for the knock-on delays that were the number one cause for delays in 2025. Air carrier delays caused more than 50 percent of all the late arrivals of aircraft that would go on to cause another delay. By this metric, air carrier delays were responsible for another 300,000 hours of delays due to their domino effects.
The third most common reason for flight disruption was the ‘National Aviation System’, causing 21.4 percent of delay times, or 334,000 hours. This category includes disruption caused by Airports, Air Traffic Control, or avoidable weather delays. It also disrupted 35.5 percent of the flights that would go on to cause knock-on delays because they arrived late.
The fourth most common reason for flight delays was ‘extreme weather’, keeping Americans on the ground for 108,423 hours last year, or 6.94 percent of all time spent delayed. While minor, foreseeable weather events are categorized under the National Aviation System, this category is for the massive storms, the unpredictable winds and the acts of god that keep planes on the ground.
The final category of delays, and thankfully the rarest, were ‘security delays’; when terminals must be evacuated or planes de-boarded, this is the category of delay that that falls under. A mercifully small 0.13 percent of time delayed in 2025 was caused by security delays, a comparatively tiny 1958 hours.
Discussing their analysis, Ivaylo Danailov, CEO of SkyRefund explains: “This analysis makes clear the factors that contribute the most to passengers’ lost time. While most delays were caused by either the airlines or the National Aviation System, both areas are always improving, for example, with the significant investment into improving air traffic control that we have recently seen.
“This means that with enough effort, thought and investment a vast amount of this time loss could be eliminated. We have already started seeing improvements year over year, and I would encourage American air passengers to be optimistic about their future flying experiences.
“The Bureau of Transportation Statistics considers most delays to be, directly or indirectly, the fault of the Airlines. Because of this, Americans traveling internationally should be aware of foreign countries’ laws that require airlines to pay compensation for significantly disrupted flights if the disruption was the airline’s fault. If you are flying to a country, such as the UK, which has such a law you can use a compensation calculator to determine how much you are owed.”
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