What Are the Chances Your Plane Will Be Delayed?

Everyone has seen a chart using FAA data to show carriers who are often delayed, but what really matters is where you are coming from and where you are going to. Use this viz to see if your flight is destined for delays.

Everyone has seen a chart using FAA data to show carriers who are often delayed, but what really matters is where you are coming from and where you are going to. Use this viz to see if your flight is destined for delays.

It is comically interesting to see charts of average airline delays, but what possible use could come from such data when there are thousands of flights every day? This viz allows travelers to educate themselves more completely.


As you might expect in the rainy northwest, delays are common in Seattle. Fliers will tack an average of ten minutes onto their travels. However, the fortunate flier who happens to be arriving from San Diego will arrive three minutes early on average.

Once again, this data set was sourced from the voluminous, beautiful, but exceedingly hard to use data.gov. Almost every dataset has a problem: either they are formatted badly, have no metadeta (come on!), or would take hours to extract into a usable format. I know I speak for many when I say I am exceedingly grateful for the site and especially excited for upgrades.