The U.S. Transportation Department said it used flawed data to compile a report this month on how many airline flights were stuck on runways for more than three hours in October. The figures, released Dec. 10, were supposed to be the first time that the public got a complete picture of the lengthy on-ground delays. An airline-passenger advocacy group spotted discrepancies in some computations and reported that to the agency.
“There was a problem with some of the airlines’ reports” because of how some carriers stated times for incidents when passengers were allowed off a plane and then reboarded, Dave Smallen, a spokesman for the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, said in an e-mail.
The Dec. 10 report said that 50 flights, one scheduled operation of every 10,000, were stuck on the ground with passengers on board for more than three hours in October. Bloomberg News
