The economic costs of air traffic delays to the U.S. economy are large and far-reaching.  As air traffic has grown over the last two decades, the number of domestic flights and air flight delays has reached record levels. Increasing flight delays and cancellations are placing a significant strain on the U.S. air travel system and costing both passengers and airlines billions of dollars each year.

For this report, the majority staff of the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) used U.S. Department of Transportation data to analyze more than 10 million individual U.S. domestic scheduled flights in 2007. These passenger flights were operated by more than 400 different carriers – both national and regional – and traveled through more than 1,100 airports.