ORIE Colloquium: Cynthia Barnhart (MIT) - Congestion and Delays in the National Air Transportation System Wednesday, November 13, 2013 at 10:45am Hollister Hall, 166 4 Central Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA ORIE Colloquium: Cynthia Barnhart (MIT) - Congestion and Delays in the National Air Transportation System Special seminar with Operations Research and Information Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering. Delays to flights and passengers cost airlines, passengers and national economies billions of dollars annually. The causes can be traced to a number of factors, including aviation regulator capacity allocation policies, airline scheduling practices, and airline competition. Competition can lead to increased flight frequencies, increased congestion levels and extensive delays in the U.S. National Aviation System. In this talk, we quantify flight and passenger delays, and estimate the contribution to delays of airline competition. We establish the connection between competition and congestion, and describe congestion mitigation strategies and policies that can lead to significant reductions in flight and passenger delays, and significant improvements in airline profits.