171 years of waiting in airports; The strange record of American travelers!

According to Travel Pulse; Flight delays are no longer just a simple passenger complaint, but have become a crisis that consumes a huge amount of time. The latest statistical analysis shows that in 2025, airline passengers in the United States will spend a total of 1.5 million hours waiting for their flights, and this situation has taken the control of time out of the hands of passengers.

According to the data of the SkyRefund company, if we add up this astonishing figure, it will be equivalent to 171 years of useful life. This group, which is active in pursuing the rights and compensation of air passengers, confirmed with the publication of this report that the challenges of scheduling in the American aviation industry are still in force.

A closer look at the data shows that the root cause of this massive time wastage is a chain of interconnected delays. “Late arrival of the plane” to the airport of origin, with a share equal to 39.7% (about 600 thousand hours), has been the main reason for waiting for passengers. When a plane arrives late, the next flight is inevitably delayed and the domino continues.

In the second place, there are internal problems of airlines. Issues such as technical malfunctions, lack of flight crews or delays in baggage loading were responsible for 31.83% of the total delays (497 thousand hours). This statistic shows that a large part of the problems are directly related to the internal management of the airlines.

Infrastructural and national factors have also made a significant contribution. The national aviation system, which includes air traffic, airport management and, of course, weather conditions, was responsible for 21.4% of delays. The interesting thing to note in this statistic is the small share of security inspections, which with less than one percent (1958 hours), played the least role in delaying passengers.

Despite this heavy track record, American airline industry executives are optimistic about the future. The CEO of SkyRefund Group believes that with the recent heavy investments in air traffic control systems, the improvement process has started and we can expect that in the coming years, some of these lost times will return to the life cycle of passengers.