As air travel grows bigger and busier everyday, successfully navigating the process can be frustrating. We hope to help travelers in their journeys by providing information and takeaways about the airline industry. We focus on these 5 areas: flight delays, weather impact, pandemic effect, seasonal variation, and flight times.

We present a deep dive into the data surrounding plane travel, by Christian, Jack, Jodi, Joyce, Michael and Sutton.

Question: Which airlines experience the highest number of delays?

The dataset, covering 2018–2023, provides information on scheduled and actual arrival and departure times. Data was gathered from Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The charts represent a random sample of 50,000 entries from the original data.

Average Departure Delay (Minutes) by Airlines

Average Arrival Delay (Minutes) by Airlines

The charts compare the average departure and arrival delays across multiple airlines. Airlines such as NK (Spirit Airlines) and UA (United Airlines) presents the highest delays for both departures and arrivals, while HA (Hawaiian Airlines) consistently show the lowest delays.

It is important to note the charts don’t account for cancellations, diverted flights, or delay reasons, which are additional factors to consider when selecting an airline.

Questions: What is the average amount of time weather delays flights compared to other things? What cities have the most weather delays?

The dataset used contains data from the past six years, 2018-2024, and contains information about the scheduled arrival time, actual arrival time, scheduled departure time, and actual departure time focusing on delays, not cancellations or diverted flights. The data used is a sample from the larger dataset, which contains 30,000,000 observations. Data was gathered from Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Cities with Highest Weather Delays

Cities with Highest Weather Delays

Weather Delays vs Other Delays

Weather Delays vs Other Delays

The graph on the left shows that Chicago is the city most affected by weather delays. Chicago, Denver and Atlanta are all top five in flights per day, while Detroit and Minneapolis are the outliers. Four of the five airports are also located in states where snow is a large factor in delays. The graph on the right shows how weather delays compare to others. Weather clearly delays flights more often than the other delay types. This information is useful for flight planning. Weather has a large impact on delaying flights, and as the holiday season closes in, keeping an eye on the weather is crucial for planning.

We were curious if the airline industry had successfully handled the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the drop in travel that followed. To do this, we examined enplanement, which is the total amount of passengers put on flights, of over 350 major airports in the US, from 2019 to 2022.

Total Passenger Throughput by Year

Total Passenger Throughput by Year

Major Airport Throughput

Major Airport Throughput

Question: How are flights delays affected across the seasons in a year?

On the left, an interactive graph depicting the average amount of flight delay from 2018-2023 across a sample of 50,000 observations. The table on the right hosts the total amount of delays by season and by length of delay from the same observations.

Season Early/ On-time Under One Hour One Hour or More Over 2 Hours
Fall 8838 2386 418 251
Spring 9368 2810 568 333
Summer 8088 2924 691 414
Winter 8963 3001 581 366

Question: How do scheduled vs actual flight duration differ?

The dataset used contains data from the past five years (2020-2024) from the 1st of every month of the two carriers, Delta Airlines and JetBlue Airlines. The data also includes both domestic and international flights, with the outliers filtered out to ensure maximum accurary. Data was gathered from Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

Airport of Origin

John F. Kennedy (JFK) - New York

Carrier

Delta Airlines

Carrier

JetBlue Airlines

The displayed graphs show the different in time between the actual and scheduled time that the carrier claims. Based on this information, we can see that Delta Airlines tends to be the more reliable carrier for accuracy in terms of flight time. We can see that the majority of Delta flights are on time, with only a few outliers. JetBlue, on the other hand, has a wider range of time differences between the actual and scheduled time. The client can use this information to make a more informed decision when booking flights, deciding to pick the more accurate carrier.

Side Note: these graphs do not take into account the reason for the delay, which may impact the client’s decision in terms of which carrier to pick.