Assaia Says 11.1-Minute Airline Turnaround Delays Could Cost $44 Billion

An aircraft turnaround that runs 11.1 minutes late may look like a modest scheduling miss. Repeated across a flight network, however, those occupied gates and delayed departures can constrain airport capacity and leave passengers facing much longer disruptions later in the day.

Aviation technology company Assaia reported that average turnaround times in North America and Europe exceeded schedules by 11.1 minutes during the first quarter of 2026. Its 2026 Turnaround Report, published October 13, says the overrun has persisted for seven consecutive quarters and could cost airlines as much as $44 billion annually.

The $44 billion figure is Assaia’s extrapolation rather than an independently verified industry total. The company applied an estimated cost of approximately $100 per delay minute and its regional average overrun to an International Air Transport Association estimate of 40 million annual flights worldwide. That calculation extends results from North America and Europe across global traffic, so it should be treated as an indication of possible scale rather than a measured worldwide bill.

The underlying per-minute assumption is broadly comparable to one current U.S. operating-cost measure. Airlines for America reported that the average direct cost of aircraft block time for U.S. passenger carriers was $98.41 per minute in 2025. Block time covers taxiing and flight, however, and is not identical to the cost structure of an aircraft sitting at a gate. Labor, fuel, maintenance, aircraft ownership and passenger disruption can also respond differently depending on where and why time is lost.

The first minutes conceal the performance gap

Assaia’s analysis of 750,000 turnarounds found little visible difference between the best- and worst-performing operations during their first 12 minutes. The separation emerged later as small losses accumulated across aircraft servicing, baggage loading and final departure preparation.

That pattern illustrates why a turnaround is a systems-integration problem rather than one task with one clock. Fueling, cleaning, catering, baggage work, passenger boarding and operational checks may depend on shared space, equipment and personnel. A delay in one activity can restrict another, while an aircraft that misses its planned departure window may encounter additional constraints beyond the gate.

The consequences also extend beyond the delayed flight. Aircraft, crews and connecting passengers move through linked schedules, allowing one late departure to influence later legs. A Eurocontrol study of delay propagation in Europe found that reactionary delays beginning in the morning affected more subsequent flight legs on average than those beginning in the afternoon. The study predates Assaia’s report and does not validate its figures, but it helps explain why the time of day and remaining schedule buffer can determine whether a small overrun is absorbed or propagated.

Gate occupancy is another constraint. Assaia estimates that turnaround overruns consume about 6% of available airport stand capacity. It also puts the construction cost of replacing the occupied capacity at a large airport at approximately $600 million, although it did not identify the airport used for that calculation. The useful operational point is narrower: a gate held longer than planned cannot serve the next aircraft, even when the airport’s runways and airspace remain available.

AI-monitored operations show an association, not a cause

The report compared approximately 125,000 turnarounds monitored by Assaia’s real-time artificial-intelligence system at eight major airports with 1.5 million turnarounds at 20 comparable airports. Monitored operations averaged 7.3 minutes over schedule, versus 11.4 minutes for the benchmark group. Assaia describes that result as a 36% smaller execution gap.

Real-time monitoring could give operators earlier visibility into a developing deviation, when intervention may still be possible. Yet the comparison does not show that the technology caused the smaller overrun. Airport layouts, schedules, staffing, airline procedures, traffic mix and available recovery time could also influence the result. The release does not separate performance by carrier type, leaving its applicability to low-cost and regional airlines unresolved.

The comparison therefore identifies a useful next test: whether monitored operations continue to outperform carefully matched controls after differences among airports and carriers are accounted for. Until then, the strongest finding is the persistence of the operational gap itself 11.1 minutes on average, repeated for seven quarters, in a part of the flight schedule where small losses can consume gates and follow an aircraft through the rest of its day.

By Thomas Caldwell — AMI’s senior editor for mechanical and mobility engineering, covering vehicle electronics, systems integration, electrification, chassis systems, propulsion, and safety policy.