As we approach the US winter, it is a good time to check delays. Especially since we have a law that supposedly protects passengers from being “stuck” on airplanes. The table below lists the top 20 most delayed flights for the month. These 20 flights averaged 972 minutes in arrival delays – a shocking number. It is important to note these flights are outliers – there were a total of 504,399 flights in October.
That said, American appears to have an unusually high number of the flights that were seriously delayed.
When looking at the big picture, the US airlines did not do a bad job. Here is the month’s 
average arrival delays in minutes. jetBlue (B6) stands out as just missing the magic 15 minute number.
The other airline that ran into more average delays is Expressjet (XE). Of some interest is the relatively low number of delays for Delta, the airline which historical data suggests has more delays than any other US airline.
On the whole the industry appears to have managed around operational challenges well.
When looking at the delay data by airport, the top 20 airports with the largest average delays line up as follows. 
Note that the airports with average arrival delays over 15 minutes tend to be small regional airports. The exceptions are Newark and San Francisco, which is on the cusp of the 15 minute watershed.
Among these airports, seven are located in the west and six are in the upper west.
In terms of origin airports that generate these arrival delays we also have a top 20 list. 
The only non-regional airport listed is Newark. But being on both lists certainly highlights Newark as a delay prone airport.
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