Across 109 airports with usable ground coverage, the median taxi-out (first movement to takeoff) is 7m and the median taxi-in (touchdown to last movement) is 4.8m, taking each airport's median equally, from 1789k published taxi movements over the last 45 days of Pro Flight Search position tracking. The longest waits before takeoff in that window are LGW at 13.4m, SFO at 13.1m, HND at 12.8m.
First movement to takeoff · median of the last 45 days · select an airport for its live delay page
Flights that left the gate 15 to 59 minutes late also taxied longer: a median of 9.1m against 7.2m for on-time departures, with the slowest tenth stretching from 15m to 19.1m. Flights that pushed back early also sat above the on-time median, at 9m. Arrival delay shows almost no relationship with taxi-in: the median stays between 5.3m and 5.6m across every lateness band.
Biggest gaps first · median taxi-out · airports with 75+ paired movements in both core bands. At several large hubs the 60m+ median sits below the 15-59m band.
Pro Flight Search tracking records aircraft ground positions at 109 airports worldwide, sampled about every 2 minutes. A taxi movement is one continuous run of ground positions for a flight, matched against its adjacent airborne positions: air contact just before means taxi-in, just after means taxi-out. Taxi-out runs from the first observed movement at the gate to takeoff. Taxi-in runs from touchdown to the last movement before the aircraft parks. The exact takeoff and touchdown moments are estimated midway between the last ground fix and the nearest airborne fix, and the sampling means published times run a couple of minutes short of carrier gate-to-takeoff reports.
An airport publishes a direction only with 100+ measured movements in the last 45 days, tracks that reach a near-stationary point at the gate and connect to takeoff or landing within a couple of minutes, and 25+ movements in the last week. Coverage depends on local receiver reception, so a hub can gain or lose a direction from week to week.
The delay comparison pairs each taxi movement with the same flight's row on our airport departure and arrival boards, matched on airport, flight and nearest scheduled time. Pairing covers flights whose radio callsign carries the flight number, about half of tracked movements. The board delay is the gate delay, recorded before the taxi segment being measured, in four bands: left early, under 15 minutes late, 15 to 59, and 60 plus. The comparison is an association between the two measurements; it does not isolate why a given taxi ran long.
Published times report P50 (median), what half of flights achieve, and P90, the time 9 out of 10 flights beat. Airport links lead to each airport's live delay page, which carries current conditions and today's measured delays.
We sessionize ground positions from live ADS-B tracking at each airport. Taxi-out runs from the first movement at the gate to takeoff; taxi-in runs from touchdown to the last movement before parking. Takeoff and touchdown times are estimated midway between the last ground fix and the nearest airborne fix.
Only airports with enough recent ground coverage publish a direction: at least 100 measured movements in the rolling window, a near-stationary endpoint at the gate, and 25 or more movements in the last week. The list changes as receiver coverage shifts.
The tracked taxi-times engine rebuilds from ClickHouse ground sessions at least every six hours and stamps a fresh KV snapshot. The page shows medians over the last rolling window of published movements.
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