My last flight was delayed 5.5 hours! Will my return flight arrive on time? (United, US transcontinental flight)
Close date updated to 2022-05-09 11:59 pm
💬 Proven correct
Jack bought M$40 of YES20 days ago
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they include some buffer time in the schedules, but I'd be a little surprised if it was enough for a 40 minute departure delay. So far I wasn't able to find info on how much padding time is typical from a quick Google.
Update: flight is now taxiing.
Jack made M$63!
Jack is betting YES at 87% 19 days ago
Arrived two hours late, resolves yes
Jack bought M$10 of YES20 days ago
Because we burned some fuel taxiing out and back, and sitting at the gate, they had to top off the fuel again, which is happening now.
Jack bought M$30 of YES20 days ago
Now we're supposed to depart in a few minutes with a 110 minute late estimated arrival.
Jack is betting YES at 90% 20 days ago
Thanks!
Oh yeah that's an interesting point, the schedules are set far in advance so they can't take into account fine grained weather patterns. In fact they probably need to build in some buffer for inclement weather which would suggest flights on days with good weather should tend to arrive early.
Austin sold M$22 of YES20 days ago
Oh rip...
Sometimes something about gulf streams can make a flight go much faster than normal, which is another way the 40min delay thing could have been covered.
Have a safe (eventual) flight!
Jack bought M$40 of YES20 days ago
Update: flight taxied back to the gate due to a maintenance issue. Wow.
Jack is betting YES at 44% 20 days ago
Btw for this flight I don't have anything time sensitive after landing so it's mostly just for fun. But I was curious to learn more about base rates, and I think a model of eta conditional on announced delay so far would be useful for better decision making.
Jack bought M$40 of YES20 days ago
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they include some buffer time in the schedules, but I'd be a little surprised if it was enough for a 40 minute departure delay. So far I wasn't able to find info on how much padding time is typical from a quick Google.
Update: flight is now taxiing.
Austin is betting YES at 78% 20 days ago
I suspect that most airlines quote longer times when you book the flight than what they actually expect, basically including a buffer amount. I suspect this because most flights I'm on seem to outperform the quoted times and arrive "early")
(Warning, this might be an infohazard if you start adjusting your planning assuming your flights come in earlier than quoted)
Or it's also possible arrival times have fat tails, so the median flight takes less time than "expected", which uses the mean time
Some base rates: https://www.bts.gov/topics/airlines-and-airports/annual-airline-time-rankings-2003-2020
84% of flights have "on-time" arrival, which is defined as arriving within 15 minutes of the scheduled time, meaning 16% are >=15 min late. I'll use this 15 minute threshold for this market.
I'm typing this from the tarmac where my flight currently has a 40 minute delay to the departure time, and yet the current estimated arrival time confusingly shows as 10 minutes earlier than scheduled???
Austin bought M$5 of YES20 days ago
Curious what base rates are for all flights on lateness, or what the distribution looks like on [actual arrival - expected arrival]
Also, conditional on you having been on one late flight, I think it's a bit more likely that another flight you take will be late, because you're the kind of person to take flight paths that might end up getting delayed??