Definition
Any known air traffic control delays that may affect a flight, including ground stops, departure restrictions, holding patterns at en route fixes, and arrival delays at the destination airport. These delays are issued by ATC due to traffic volume, weather, runway closures, equipment outages, or other factors limiting the system's capacity, and are reported to pilots during a standard preflight briefing.
Plain English
Waits or restrictions that air traffic control has put in place which could slow your flight down — before takeoff, during the flight, or arriving at your destination.
Context Anchor
Seen in a standard preflight briefing, where the briefer may tell you about known delays affecting your departure airport, destination, or route.
Derivation
Delay comes from older French and Latin roots meaning to slow down or put off. That fits the aviation use: the flight is not stopped forever, but its movement may be slowed or held for safety and traffic flow.
Why Pilots Care
These delays affect departure timing, fuel planning, and arrival schedules, so pilots must build them into their flight calculations.
Intuition Check
Do not read ATC delays as simply “the flight is late.” In this context, it means air traffic control is limiting or holding aircraft movement for safety, traffic, weather, or airport capacity reasons.
Example Sentence 1
The briefer mentioned ATC delays of up to 45 minutes into Chicago due to a ground stop, so we added extra fuel and picked a closer alternate.
Example Sentence 2
The briefer mentioned possible ATC delays from afternoon thunderstorms along the route.