Today’s New York Times story “Ugly Airline Math: Planes Late, Fliers Even Later” shows how passenger Janis Cavinder’s 24-hour flight delay was officially counted as a two-hour delay.

“That is because these statistics track how late airplanes are, not how late passengers are….If a flight taxies out, sits for hours, and then taxies back in and is canceled, the delay is not recorded. Likewise, flights diverted to cities other than their destination are not figured into delay statistics.”

What it all means is that flight delays are much worse than reported. But then you knew that already if you’ve flown recently.