NEW YORK – On a recent morning, Delta Air Lines Flight 435 pushed back early from the gate at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Passengers watched the safety video and settled in for a six-hour trip.

Then they waited. And waited.

Still within sight of the gate, their jet sat motionless due to airport congestion. It wasn’t until 30 minutes after passengers buckled in that they were finally in the sky.

It’s a scene playing out across the country. According to an Associated Press analysis, airplanes spent 23 minutes and 32 seconds, on average, taxiing between gates and runways during the first nine months of the year. That’s the longest it has been since the Bureau of Transportation Statistics started tracking taxi times in 1995 and a 50-second increase over last year’s average.