Saving & Spending Travel

Airlines are Padding Their Scheduled Flight Times by More than 10%

FinanceBuzz analyzed millions of flight records to find out how much extra time airlines are adding to flight schedules, which airports and airlines pad flight time the most, and more.

airplane taking off from the airport
Updated Jan. 22, 2025
Fact checked

What if there was a way for airlines to improve their on-time arrival stats without having to address any underlying issues that often cause flights to be delayed? What if airlines simply told passengers that flights take longer than they actually do?

Turns out, that's exactly what airlines are doing. This practice, known as "schedule creep" or "flight padding," is a standard tool airlines use to reduce their arrival delay statistics. And it's happening more frequently than ever before.

The FinanceBuzz team analyzed government data on over 35 million flights, including some dating as far back as 2012, to see just how pervasive this practice is and how it's changed over time. We identified what flight padding looks like across the industry, as well as which airlines and airports are fudging their flight times the most.

Key findings

  • On average, airlines are padding their scheduled flight times by just over 10%.
  • At 13%, Southwest Airlines adds the most padding time to its schedules of any airline. Hawaiian Airlines does it the least at 4.7%.
  • On a typical two-hour flight, airlines add approximately 11 minutes to their flight schedules to counteract delays. In 2012, they added only eight minutes, meaning padding time has increased by 27% in 10 years.
  • Even with this extra padding, more than 20% of flights were delayed in 2022. This number would have ballooned to more than 30% without the extra padding.
  • Flights out of Dallas, Charlotte, and Houston have the worst problems with airlines adding extra time to their flights. Over 16% of scheduled flight times are padded for flights from each of those cities.

How flights are typically scheduled

Chart breakdown of average flight time scheduling and how much of it is in air, ground time, or padding time added by airlines.


Of the more than five million domestic flights scheduled in 2022, the median scheduled flight duration was exactly 120 minutes (two hours). That 120 minutes includes:

  • 87 minutes actually in the air
  • 22 minutes on the ground (before takeoff or after landing)
  • 11 minutes of schedule padding added by airlines

Airlines add those extra 11 minutes of padding — 9.1% of the total scheduled flight time — to account for delays. And it works. Those 11 minutes prevent a higher percentage of flights from being categorized as delayed, even when they actually are.

There's a range of padding times
On a typical flight, airlines are padding their scheduled flight time by 9.1%. But 31% of flights in the U.S. are scheduled for 110% or more than how long the flight actually takes. Only 6% are padded by more than 120%.

Because the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) defines a "delayed" flight as one that arrives more than 15 minutes after its originally scheduled time, these minutes can add up. Even with the extra time built in, more than 20% of flights were officially delayed in 2022. Without that extra padding time, the number of delayed flights balloons to more than 30%.

Padding time is also rising. While the typical flight schedule in 2022 included 11 minutes of padding, that number was just eight minutes in 2012. That's a 27% jump in the last decade.

Padding is on the rise
Flight padding, or "schedule creep", has increased more than 27% in the last 10 years.

Which airlines pad their flight times the most?

Airline Time in air Actual time Scheduled time Padding time % padding
Southwest Airlines 62 79 90 11 13.9%
Alaska Airlines 90 115 128 13 11.3%
United Airlines 102 128 141 13 10.2%
American Airlines 99 124 136 12 9.7%
Delta Airlines 84 106 116 10 9.4%
Jetblue Airlines 71 93 101 8 8.6%
Spirit Airlines 111 136 147 11 8.1%
Frontier Airlines 89 117 125 8 6.8%
Allegiant Air 83.5 109.5 116.5 7 6.4%
Hawaiian Airlines 26 43 45 2 4.7%

Southwest Airlines is the worst offender for artificially inflating its flight times. The median Southwest flight is scheduled for 90 minutes, with 11 of those minutes added for padding. That means that nearly 14% of Southwest's scheduled flight times consist of extra padding.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Hawaiian Airlines adds just two minutes of padding on average, which equates to just 4.7% of its scheduled flight times. It is the only airline where less than 6% of flight times are padding.

Which airports have the worst padding problems?

Origin airport Time in air Actual time Scheduled time Padding time % padding
Dallas Love Field 43 58 70 12 20.7%
Charlotte Douglas International 42 66 77 11 16.7%
George Bush Intercontinental 43 68 79 11 16.2%
William P. Hobby 42 56 65 9 16.1%
San Francisco International 87 112 129 17 15.2%
Tampa International 64 84 95 11 13.1%
LaGuardia 110 140 158 18 12.9%
Harry Reid International 65 87 98 11 12.6%
Norman Y. Mineta San José International 58 76 85 9 11.8%
Portland International 32 53 59 6 11.3%
Phoenix Sky Harbor International 72 92 102 10 10.9%
Philadelphia International 96 119 132 13 10.9%
Ronald Reagan Washington National 67 93 103 10 10.8%
Los Angeles International 103 122 135 13 10.7%
Newark Liberty International 113 143 158 15 10.5%
Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International 83 105 116 11 10.5%
Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall 84 105 116 11 10.5%
Chicago O'Hare International 101 126 139 13 10.3%
Logan International 70 93 102 9 9.7%
Sacramento International 62 83 91 8 9.6%
Minneapolis-St. Paul International 64 99 108 9 9.1%
Detroit Metro Wayne County 53 88 96 8 9.1%
Spokane International 46 68 74 6 8.8%
Seattle-Tacoma International 122 147 160 13 8.8%
San Diego International 61 80 87 7 8.8%
Salt Lake City International 71 93 101 8 8.6%
Kahului 23 37 40 3 8.1%
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International 88 111 120 9 8.1%
Dallas-Fort Worth International 110 136 146 10 7.4%
Orlando International 119 144 154 10 6.9%
Denver International 93 118 126 8 6.8%
Miami International 91 119 127 8 6.7%
John F. Kennedy International 329 361 382 21 5.8%
Hilo International 37 52 55 3 5.8%
Lihue 21 35 37 2 5.7%
Luis Muñoz Marin International 157 180 190 10 5.6%
Ellison Onizuka Kona International at Keahole 29 45 47 2 4.4%
Ted Stevens Anchorage International 177 200 207 7 3.5%
Daniel K Inouye International 28 45 46 1 2.2%

Among America's 50 busiest airports, Dallas Love Field in Dallas, Texas, is the airport where departing flights are padded the most. The average flight out of that airport is scheduled to take 70 minutes but really takes 58 minutes, meaning that over 20% of the average scheduled flight time from that airport is padding.

Of note, Dallas Love Field is the birthplace and corporate headquarters of Southwest Airlines, the airline that adds the highest percentage of padding time to its flights. 95% of the flights from the Dallas Love Field are operated by Southwest

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the average flight out of Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in Honolulu, Hawaii, has just one minute added to scheduled flight time on average, which represents just 2% of total scheduled flight time. Hawaiian Airlines, the least padded airline, represents 44% of all flights originating at that airport.

Advice from our experts

What can passengers do when their flights are delayed?


What are some examples of how airlines might compensate a passenger on a delayed flight?


Is schedule padding going to become more common?


How can travelers protect themselves from the consequences of flight delays?

Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

How to save money on traveling

Flight delays or not, there are a few things you can do to ease the financial burden when you're traveling:

  • Schedule your flights wisely. Knowing when to fly can save you money and time, no matter where you're traveling. These are the best and worst times to fly.
  • Save money on tickets. Your next plane trip doesn't have to break the bank. With these clever tips to save on airline ticket prices, you can expand your vacation options.
  • Elevate your airport experience. From earning miles and points to getting lounge access and free checked bags, airline credit cards can make your trip through the airport more enjoyable.

Methodology

To compile the data shown above, we downloaded over 35 million flight records from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, representing all domestic flights from 2012, and 2017 to 2022.

To create a representative sample, and to reduce the outlier impact of lower-passenger-volume on regional flights, we filtered our dataset to only the 150 most-traveled (by flight volume) routes in the U.S. in 2022. This represents 4.8 million flights totaling more than 11 million hours of scheduled flights.

In the data, we calculated "padding time" for each flight by subtracting the Scheduled Flight Time from the Actual Flight Time for each flight that was on time or delayed less than 15 minutes (to be consistent with BTS standards). We were able to calculate the time on the ground by subtracting the Time in Air from Actual Flight Time.

We repeated this process for 2012's data to create decade comparisons. Note that 2022 contained data only through November 2022. The most recent data at the time of collection was in Q1 2023. We have no reason to believe the omission of December's data would impact this analysis in a meaningful way (it would have also reflected major Southwest Airlines cancellations and holiday travel).

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Author Details

Josh Koebert

Josh Koebert is a Senior Data Journalist at FinanceBuzz who writes about personal finance trends. As an experienced researcher, Josh’s data-driven stories focus on the intersection between economics and consumer behavior: where personal finance meets everyday life.
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