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Blame airlines, not weather, for most US flight delays

Delta travelers lined up in Salt Lake City this month after computer woes delayed flights. Rick Bowmer/Associated Press/File 2016

Airline miscues — such as the computer glitches that grounded hundreds of thousands of passengers this summer — are now the biggest cause of flight delays in the United States.

Late arrivals triggered by mechanical breakdowns, a lack of flight crews, and other factors attributed to the airlines were the largest category of delay last year for just the second time, and by the widest margin, since the government began collecting such data in 2003.

It exceeded what had been traditionally the biggest causes: weather and hiccups in the Federal Aviation Administration’s air-traffic system, according to data provided by the airlines to the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

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‘‘They don’t have any give in the system anymore,’’ said Charlie Leocha, president of Travelers United, which advocates on behalf of passengers. ‘‘I think a lot of it has to do with this drive to profitability.’’

The 323,454 flights delayed last year due to the airlines exceeded the number attributed to the FAA by 6,770, the biggest margin ever. Almost six out of 100 flights were held up by factors attributed to the airlines. That doesn’t include the ripple of delays that a late flight inflicts on subsequent ones.

And the difference is even more substantial when measured by the aggregate amount of time flights are tardy. Airline-caused delays totaled 20.2 million minutes last year — 2.7 million more than all other categories combined.

Airlines for America, the Washington trade group representing most of the large carriers, said the government numbers don’t tell the whole story. Airlines helped the system achieve an on-time rate of about 80 percent by reducing the number of flights, which eased congestion at the busiest airports, Sharon Pinkerton, the group’s vice president for legislative and regulatory policy, said in an interview.

‘‘I do think that is a major part of the context that we need to be talking more about,’’ Pinkerton said.

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A delay is defined as any flight that reaches the gate at least 15 minutes later than its scheduled arrival time. Delays attributed to the airlines include such factors as maintenance, pilots who didn’t arrive on time, aircraft cleaning, or baggage loading.

Or, as some unlucky passengers recently learned, computer glitches. A power loss at Delta’s computer center on Aug. 8 prompted more than 2,000 canceled flights worldwide. A computer failure at Southwest Airlines Co. on July 20 is expected to cost ‘‘tens of millions’’ of dollars after more than 2,300 flights were canceled, the company said.

Delays in recent years are far less severe than the period from 2006 through 2008, when there were more flights and carriers fought fiercely for market share at overburdened airports such as those around New York and Chicago. Since then, airlines deserve credit for cutting flights and working collaboratively with the FAA, according to the agency and academics who have studied the data.

That has reduced the delays attributed to the FAA system.

But the swelling share of airline-caused flight delays marks a sea change from the days starting in 2003 when passenger outrage prompted regulators to require carriers to report the reasons flights were delayed. For much of the 2000s, late flights attributed to the aviation system far exceeded those by the airlines.

That trend has gradually reversed itself, according to the US data.