Every 30 minutes, Cirium samples flights that are departing or have departed an airport in a relevant current time range. Using these observations, we consider the magnitude of delay, cancellations, and time of day to generate a normalized score we call the Delay Index. A low index (0-1) indicates that departures are running relatively smoothly while a higher index (4-5) is indicative of significant delays and flight operations disruptions.
METAR (Meteorological Terminal Aviation Routine Weather Report) reports provide current weather conditions at an airport. These reports include valuable information that can help illustrate why airports may be experiencing delays. Visibility, ceilings, temperature, wind direction and speed, and obviously weather conditions all may impact an airport’s operations. Cirium collects this information for most airports in the world and makes this information available through our weather APIs.