Stuck waiting: ground delays at US airports on the rise
NEW YORK - An Associated Press analysis finds airplanes spent an average of 23 minutes, 32 seconds taxiing between gates and runways during the first nine months of this year.
That's the longest it's been since the Bureau of Transportation Statistics started tracking taxi times in 1995. It's a 50-second increase over last year.
The top offender is Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. Of all the additional time, one of out of five extra minutes can be traced back to delays at O'Hare. Planes in Chicago spent an average of 1 minute and 18 seconds extra navigating taxiways.
Most of the ground delays at O'Hare stem from a construction project to reconfigure taxiways and runways.
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Airlines say longer taxi times are baked into schedules, so planes generally still arrive on time.