Aircraft turnaround delays across North America and Europe could be costing airlines up to $44 billion a year, according to the 2026 Turnaround Report published on October 13 by aviation technology company Assaia.
The report found turnarounds ran an average of 11.1 minutes over schedule in the first quarter of 2026.
The overrun has continued for seven consecutive quarters, the company said. Assaia reached the $44 billion figure by applying an industry cost of approximately $100 per delay minute to IATA’s estimate of 40 million flights a year.
On that basis, Assaia claims the gap is equivalent to as much as 90% of the global airline industry’s forecast operating profit for 2026.
The calculation applies an average taken from North America and Europe to global flight volumes. It comes from the vendor alone and has not been independently verified.
The report says turnaround overruns use around 6% of available airport stand capacity.
Assaia estimates that at a large airport, the gates taken up by overrunning aircraft would cost around $600 million to build. It did not name the airport behind that estimate. The report also finds that one in five flights arrives late.
An analysis of 750,000 turnarounds found that for the first 12 minutes, the worst-performing turns look almost identical to the best. Delays then build up across servicing, baggage loading and final departure preparations.
Once an aircraft misses its departure window, those lost minutes can turn into much longer delays.
“Delays rarely begin with one obvious problem. Small amounts of time are lost across the turnaround and gradually add up, creating knock-on delays that can follow an aircraft throughout the day and impact the wider network,” said Christiaan Hen, chief executive of Assaia.
To test whether real-time AI monitoring is associated with better turnaround performance, the report compares approximately 125,000 AI-monitored turnarounds at eight major airports with 1.5 million turnarounds at 20 comparable peer airports.
The AI-monitored operations averaged 7.3 minutes over schedule, compared with 11.4 minutes for the benchmark group. Assaia describes this as a 36% smaller execution gap.
The release does not break down turnaround performance by carrier type, leaving open how the findings apply to low-cost and regional operators running short turn times.
“Eleven minutes might not sound significant, but across millions of flights, the impact is huge,” said Hen.
