A 4.5 hour flight is delayed almost 2 hours yet the arrival time has only increased by 10 minutes. How does the pilot make up the 2 hours without strapping a rocket onto the airplane?

By burning a lot more fuel and having a more direct route with favorable winds.

I little more info might be needed here. You can only go so fast.

I have certainly seen posting of overly optimistic arrival times after delays. It drives me crazy. Just wish they would be honest about it.

The honest truth:
Flight actually takes 2.7 hrs. Ground taxi varies between 10 minutes and 120 minutes. Tell the passengers flight takes 4.5 hrs.

Actual taxi takes ten minutes, flight arrives on actual flight time...tell pax "good news, we made up time and are only 10 minutes late" but now you're gate is occupied Because they were expecting you in 4.5 hrs, not 2.7hrs.

Airlines fudge the numbers to keep everyone ignorant and happy. He didn't make up time, he just used his allotted time sitting at the gate. When they tell you a flight time, it's gate to gate, not takeoff to touchdown.

you can look up the details on flight aware for your particular flight to determine the actual flying time. Compare that to what you were told for your "flight time" and see if there is a discrepancy.

I should also add that airlines also book "economy cruise power settings" which are slower speeds, mach .76, .77 or so. Normal cruise is mach .80 so the pilot can fly a little faster and make up a small amount of time flying faster, but you're talking less than ten minutes or so.

Nevermind, I've been updating the flight status and for the last 3 updates (most recent one when I made the OP) it said +10 min arrival time, now it's back to 4 hour flight time so +2h 10min late arrival.


And here I thought airlines were being dicks flying at 50% speed to save fuel.

A 25 minute Indy-Chicago flight is usually scheduled for about 1:25 gate to gate. There's a lot of extra time in there to allow for various delays. Actual time is more like 10 minute taxi, 25 in the air, 15 minute taxi which is 50 minutes.

Times given during delays are often wrong. I had an announced 1 hour delay in January, but checking where the plane was coming from and where it was coming from before that made it clear it was going to be a lot later than 1 hour. Not sure how they come up with it. I think they underestimate and then keep extending to avoid having people change flights too soon.

A lot of it is being realistic about the fact that stuff happens and building that into the schedule. I used to fly to work and it was right around an hour on the Hobbs (engines running for one hour), but it seemed to take between 1.5 and two hours door to door. Finally got smart and just planned two hours and told the wife it would two point five. Then I was finally in good shape on timing.

It really depends on the flight.

Flights are assigned a cost index; it's a ration of what's prioritized on a given flight. A cost index of zero might be pure economy flight; best endurance; takes a long time to get there, the least fuel burn. A cost index of 400 might be faster, but burn a lot more fuel. It's not a simple matter of cost, despite the name, however. The airline isn't necessarily interested in burning the least amount of fuel. The time enroute is tempered by the amount of fuel to be carried, the amount of reserve fuel, etc. Typically for every extra pound of fuel, it requires roughly 4% of that fuel to be burned extra, just to carry the fuel. Carrying extra fuel to go fast can be a point of diminishing returns; carry extra fuel to do it, but can't climb as high, true airspeed is reduced, can't go as fast, burn lots of fuel for no gain. There's typically a happy medium, and that varies with the headwind and other factors.

Winds aloft make a difference. One can fight a strong headwind, or take advantage of a significant tailwind. Doing so, however, may mean flying in turbulence which can range from uncomfortable to dangerous; this affects the decision of routing, altitude, and other factors, which in term affect the time. If your flight has been delayed, it might mean more direct routing instead of going around a weather system, or it may mean less holding, and a more direct, faster flight.

Simply going faster is not the only way to get there sooner, or affect trip time. When I get a flight plan, it has the exact airborne time and is nearly always accurate within a minute or two . Every point the airplane flies over, and there may be twenty pages of those points, has a predicted time and fuel burn, and fuel remaining, cited on the master flight plan...it's rare for those times to not be within a minute or so of predictions, and fuel burns are usually very accurate. A lot of computing went into that flight plan. I can't, as a rule, do much better.

The nature of the flight applies. I've moved airplanes between Newark and JFK, about fifteen miles apart; it took four hours. I've done repositioning flights in Dubai across town, a fifteen minute flight, but two such flights took nearly sixteen hours. A full duty day. Distance doesn't necessarily mean short, and going in a straight line between two points isn't necessarily the fastest. In fact, it's not uncommon on a north pacific routing when going to Japan, Korea, China, or Vietnam, to go as far north as the bearing straight, rather than a straight shot across the pacific. This may be to take advantage of lesser winds, diversion airports, to avoid volcanic activit, or other factors...and what was planned two hours ago may not be the plan that's flown two hours later due to any number of factors.

Taxi time isn't always predictable. Today at an eastern europe location, we received our flight clearance, pushed back and started engines, only to be informed that our clearance was no longer available. Delays. We might push back, and find that a valve that taps air off an engine (bleed valve) has failed; this may require corrective action, checklists, paperwork. Delays. Neither predictable, nor can one plan for that.

The flight time cited for a given trip is not chocks to chocks; it's not the time from the terminal to the terminal, but rather brake release on the runway, until landing. Block times, which are chocks to chocks, beginning to ending, and how you think of it as a passenger, can be another 45 minutes or so do to taxi delays, air or ground traffic, maintenance issues, etc. The delay may be on other side of the country, or even the other side of the world. Some destinations have slot times; you can only arrive within a given window of 15 to 30 minutes. Not earlier, not later, and one may end up holding or waiting or delaying to meet those times...which can become moving targets due to weather, air traffic control outages, etc.

There's not a whole lot to be "made up" in flight. That said, it's not uncommon to be given "direct" to a waypoint or fix, instead of flying a much longer route. I had several of those today, which shortened our flight. Sometimes those clearances can be accepted, other times, they cannot. The flight still has to fit into the movement of hundreds or thousands of other aircraft. There's only so much space and so much separation.

A flight which departs during a busy time might be considerably longer than a flight that departs late at night when traffic is lighter. It's more common to get direct clearances at night than at peak periods in the day. A delayed flight might be able to take advantage of that.

So far as estimating delays; the delay is often unpredictable. A maintenance issue may occur that requires trouble shooting. What's discovered can be a wildcard. It may reveal other problems that can take a long time, or it could be fixed quickly. We had an issue at the aircraft today which turned out to be a switching error by the previous crew; the problem was quickly resolved and signed off. It goes the other way, too.

Likewise, when weather or other problems create delays in the national airspace system, estimates of time are given that are subject to change. Air traffic control may advise that a clearance can be expected in 45 minutes, the aircraft is held for release, meaning that ATC doesn't want to put it in the system until it's ready for that aircraft. Or holding in flight might be taking place. When entering a holding pattern, one of the elements of the holding clearance is an EFC, or expect further clearance time. This might be a half hour, for example, but approaching that time, a new EFC of another half-hour expectation might be issued...maybe the runway lights are out at the destination and being addressed, or a thunderstorm or system is making an approach unsafe. There are a lot of variables.

Another issue which causes delays are the restrictions on how much time a flight crew may be used. These are called duty limits, and are for everyone's protection, so a crew doesn't end up flying fatigued. If delays begin to pile up, it may be that one or several members of the crew can no longer depart, and must be replaced by a reserve pilot or crew. These further complicate the issue and frequently become an issue as delays mount or become excessive. The weather clears, or the aircraft mainteance item is repaired, but the crew is no longer legal to make the trip.

Altitudes make a big difference in range and speed, tempered by winds and temperatures aloft, aircraft weight, etc. Aircraft weight at the destination becomes a factor; one can burn too much fuel, or one can burn too little fuel and need to dispose of weight to land. This could occur if the arrival is much earlier than planned, because the planning is for a given flight time and burn; change one variable, change the others.

As for what you're seeing when you check on status: that could simply be updating delays. Especially when multiple factors are at play, not all will be able to report the delays accurately, or there may be delays in estimating the delay. It may simply be a delay in updating status, or it may be one estimate based on weather, but a new estimate based on maintenance information, or an air traffic control delay.

FLy west over a time zone and you'll pick up an hour!

Depends where you're flying. When leaving Korea or Japan for Anchorage, Seattle or Los Angeles, I often arrive about three hours before I took off, same day, when flying eastbound. We cross the dateline, fly into yesterday, and arrive at a local time that's earlier the same day, than when we took off.

Going west, the opposite occurs: we lose a day (because we fly into tomorrow, crossing the dateline), instead of gain one. Takeoff on a nine hour flight, but land 25 hours later, locally speaking.

If you're flying one time zone's difference, or in other words, one hour's difference between departure and destination, and the flight time is one hour, then flying west, you may land at the same time you took off. Take off at five PM, land an hour later at...five PM.