FiveThirtyEight broke down the data around airline delays last month in a very detailed interactive graphic with an accompanying article. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, which collects all of this information, the 6 million domestic flights in 2014 took an extra 80 million minutes to reach their destinations. Out the major airlines, United and American were the worst offenders.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/flights/

What works:
-This clearly took a lot of work in terms of data organization and analysis. While it’s still a little confusing at first, the methods are explained thoroughly in an accompanying article.
-The visualizations are clear and engaging. Having the box for entering specific flights at the top works well to draw readers in.
-The map itself is fun to play with. Both charts do a good job of displaying the key points.

What could be improved:
-It would be better if the airport information card popped up automatically when you hover over an airport on the map. Right now, with so many dots, it’s hard to tell what you’re looking at unless you click on one.
-The graph plotting out times by month is confusing. Flipping the axes, so months are on the bottom along the x axis and times are on the lefthand side along y, would have been easier to understand. Right now it just looks like a bunch of lines.

Overall, a strong interactive piece that makes me happy to fly Virgin America!