I am surprised that while stack holding and taxi-in times have been fairly consistent in the three months that have been reported on, and average taxi-out time has been steady-ish, the average times for departure hold have been all over the place.
November average 10.26 mins
December 2.98 mins
January 7.53 mins
It doesn't appear to be related to easterlies/westerlies.
November is when IFACTS was introduced into the Area Control Ops Room and there was either a 10 or 20% reduction in traffic values for each sector, plus a lot of nervous supervisors who, had not received any of their training yet.
We did have a management meeting where they told us how much extra delay there was for the introduction of iFACTS, it was less than they expected, but still considerably more than the November average, hence the big figure.
Simples
