What a minute of delay costs, and why it matters which process causes it

Our website shows a big number: more than 30 billion dollars a year. The industry usually attributes it to IATA; what can be verified is the FAA's estimate, which puts the annual cost of delays in the United States alone at about 33 billion dollars ¹⁰. The number is plausible, but too big for a decision at your own station. Someone handling 30 flights a day at a regional airport wants to know what their delays cost, where they arise and whom they affect. That takes four quantities: the minute, the rotation, the share from the turnaround and the process. The calculator at the end of this text uses exactly these four, and each section ends at one of its controls.

The minute

The most robust values come from Eurocontrol, calculated by the University of Westminster. A minute of delay at the gate costs the airline €166 on average across all delays and €45 for short delays under 30 minutes; the network average for ATFM delay is €100 per minute ⁴. The range is no contradiction. Short delays cost mainly fuel and crew time, long delays cost connections, rebookings and compensation. In the US the value is in the same order of magnitude: in 2024 a block minute cost US passenger airlines $100.76, of which $35.23 crew and $33.06 fuel ⁶.

The value depends on the aircraft and the airline. An ATR costs less per minute than an A321, a network carrier with connections more than a point-to-point carrier. It does not depend on which process on the apron caused the minute. That is the most important sentence in this text, and we will come back to it.

The rotation

An aircraft flies several rotations a day. A delay in the morning travels with it. According to Eurocontrol, every minute of primary delay generated 0.79 minutes of reactionary delay in 2025, 0.82 in 2024 ³. In 2024, reactionary delay was the largest single component at 46 % of delay minutes, 8.0 of 17.5 minutes per flight ¹. For the first rotation of the day, Eurocontrol expects that each minute of delay can quadruple by the last rotation ⁷.

A calculator that counts only the delayed minute itself underestimates the cost by almost half. That is why we apply a factor of 0.8 to every minute.

The share from the turnaround

The turnaround is the largest source of new delay. For 2024, CODA reports an average of 17.5 minutes of delay per flight. Of these, 8.0 are reactionary delay, which an aircraft brings along from an earlier rotation. Of the 9.5 minutes that arise anew, 4.3 go back to airline-related causes such as ramp handling, boarding or staff shortages, almost half ¹. That is more than the next two causes combined: en-route air traffic flow management at 2.3 minutes, and delays at the airports, mostly from weather and capacity, at 1.7 minutes.

No one at a station can influence weather or air traffic control. The turnaround processes are shaped by airline, airport and ground handler together. The calculator holds this share at about a quarter of all delay minutes, and the reactionary delay it causes later in the rotation is added with the factor from the previous section.

The process

This is where it gets uncomfortable. There is no cost per delay minute per service. A minute of off-block delay costs the same whether it arose during fuelling or during catering. A figure such as "fuelling delay costs X per minute" therefore has no basis.

Still, it matters which process overruns, for three reasons.

First, the critical path. A cleaning that overruns by five minutes while fuelling still has eight minutes to go moves nothing. In the same situation, a fuelling that overruns by five minutes moves off-block. A study at TU Dresden found fuelling on the critical path in 57 % of turnarounds, catering in 35 % and cleaning in 8 % ⁸. The study is from 2009 and looks at narrowbodies; the order of magnitude is plausible, the numbers for your station are known only at your station.

Second, frequency. A process that rarely overruns costs little, even if it is critical.

Third, who does the work. Fuelling and catering usually sit with third parties, boarding with the airline, baggage and pushback with the handler. For the cost at the aircraft this makes no difference. For working together it matters a great deal: each partner can improve the processes it runs itself, and everyone benefits.

The calculator therefore distributes the turnaround minutes across processes by frequency times overrun times criticality. The presets are reference values and assumptions. They are an estimate.

Three perspectives on the same minutes

For the airline the arithmetic is simple: critical turnaround minutes times cost per minute times 1.8.

For the handler it looks different. What reaches the handler is not the aircraft price per minute but the SLA. A publicly available airBaltic SLA sets a punctuality target of 97 % per month and staggers the reduction of the handling fee by delay duration in bands up to 14, 15 to 29, 30 to 44 and 45 minutes and over ⁹. The amounts are redacted. The delay code decides which minutes count; it is mandatory once off-block is more than three minutes behind schedule. The contract is explicit about missed connections: where they result from handling, the handler bears the cost of rebooking, accommodation and compensation, and above three passengers a month a contractual penalty per passenger is added. The cost at the aircraft and the cost in the contract therefore depend on the same minutes. The calculator shows the first, the SLA holds the second. When handler and airline know both, their SLA conversation is about processes rather than deductions.

For the airport it is blocked stands and the punctuality points its airlines lose at its station. An airport that handles aircraft itself also finds the handler share in its own processes.

The calculator

Two inputs: flights per day and punctuality. Everything else is preset with the values from this text and can be expanded and changed. With 30 flights a day and 73 % punctuality, the European average, the result is about 23,700 critical turnaround minutes a year and delay costs of about €4.3 million ($4.9 million) for the airlines at that station. Enter 85 % punctuality and you land at about €2.4 million ($2.7 million). The levers are visible.

What the calculator does not know

It works with averages. CODA reports 32.4 minutes per delayed flight ²; the distribution behind that is skewed, and a single turnaround at 90 minutes costs more than 18 at five. It adds up processes although, when processes run in parallel, the maximum counts at the end; the criticality factors approximate this. And its process split is borrowed.

That split is exactly the point where an estimate ends and a measurement begins. Whether fuelling moves off-block in 57 % or in 20 % of cases at your station is in no study. The answer comes from verified & confirmed timestamps of your own turnarounds.