The geography of the US is not changing. Cities remain the distance apart. Yet we are seeing a steady rise in a number of minutes airlines need to connect these cities. Take a look at the following chart. We used the US DoT On-Time database for this analysis. We took the overall averages for each month; combining millions of data points.
On the left, we have the time airlines post in the CRS systems. On the right is the actual time to complete the flights. The two charts show the kind of symmetry one would expect. But notice from the Y-axis; the CRS times are slightly higher. Airlines pad their schedules – a well-established fact.
