Ground Delays Impact Millions at U.S. Airports

Millions of airline passengers are stuck in planes on the ground every year at US airports with nearly 60,000 departures delayed between one and two hours in 2006, government figures show.

A couple of dozen flights annually are held between the departure gate and the runway for more than five hours. While inconvenient, they do not approach the service disaster experienced by hundreds of JetBlue Airways passengers stranded for up to 10 hours with an ice storm raging outside their planes in New York last week.

Nearly 400,000, or 5.6 percent, of the 7.1 million commercial flights last year at US airports experienced departure delays of 30 minutes to an hour after pulling away from the gate, according to Transportation Department statistics.

Nearly 60,000 flights, or less than 1 percent of total departures, were held on taxiways for up to two hours. More than 1,000 planes experienced delays of at least three hours and 36 were stuck for more than five hours.

The figures have remained constant for several years and cover the industry’s economic boom of the late 1990s and this decade’s worst-ever downturn. But financial and schedule pressures on airlines can make it more difficult to cope with weather or other problems, especially at congested airports, experts have said.

Congress clearly wants airlines to take steps on their own rather than draft legislation. The airlines have been in touch with key lawmakers, a congressional aide said.