NOtimTAMs
If you’re delayed 1 in 5 flights, having submitted a flight plan or details well in advance, that’s unacceptable. Either there are insufficient air traffic service resources in the areas in which you fly, or the air traffic service providers in those areas are not competent, or you’re not working the flightplan or the system properly.
I have to say, yours is the only first hand report of delays of that kind that I’ve ever heard. Do you have any colleagues who suffer the same delay rate?
As to your rhetorical question re transponders: indeed. All this outrage about transponder requirements, but nobody’s stopped to find out how often (if ever) someone is prevented from flying somewhere, or at all, because of transponder requirements.
And to answer your question about facts and data: you’d be surprised how often facts and data get in the way of ostensibly compelling arguments, legal or otherwise!