Operational Intelligence · Inaugural Edition
The Two-Queue Regime
NFA approval queue behavior, January–May 2026. Inaugural operational intelligence briefing. An analysis of 2,462 NFA approval records: a 35-day median divergence between Form 1 and Form 4 filings, a February Form 1 queue freeze, and the right-censoring that governs how recent cohorts may be read.
Data as of June 1, 2026 · 2,462 records · robust window Jan 2026, Feb 2026, Mar 2026
The Two-Queue Distribution — Overall Approval Wait Histogram
Distribution of all 2,462 approval waits by day bucket, revealing a bimodal shape: a fast cluster under 14 days and a separate slow cluster between 31 and 90 days.
Interquartile Range vs. Median by Population
p25, median, and p75 for the overall population and each form type. The wide overall IQR (33 days) collapses once split by form type, showing that system-wide "volatility" is largely the artifact of mixing two tighter distributions.
Form 1 vs. Form 4 — Distribution Density Curves
Normalized density (share of each form type per 3-day bin) across the wait-day axis. Form 4 rises sharply near 6–12 days and tails right; Form 1 is broad and peaks near 55–62 days. The dense regions barely overlap.
Owner-Type Effect, Conditioned on Form Type
Median wait for Trust vs. Individual within each form type. Form 1 medians are identical (48 vs 48); Form 4 medians diverge sharply (25 vs 8) — the owner-type effect is concentrated in Form 4.
Four-Segment Percentile Spread
p10, p25, median, p75, p90 (and max) for each of the four form-type-by-owner-type segments. Form 4 Individual is a compact box near the origin; Form 1 Trust is wide and right-shifted with a long tail to 120 days.
Outlier Concentration by Segment
Share of each segment exceeding the system-wide 90th-percentile threshold of 61 days. Outlier status is almost entirely a Form 1 phenomenon (~27%) versus near-zero for Form 4 (~1%).
Segment Median Trajectories, January–March (Robust Window)
Median wait by segment across the fully observed Jan–Mar cohorts. Form 1 lines rise toward 62–65 days; Form 4 Individual descends toward 4; Form 4 Trust holds flat near 25 — the segments fan apart rather than moving together.
Apr–May excluded due to right-censoring (see censoring chart).
Form 1 Individual — Monthly Bucket Composition
Share of Form 1 Individual approvals in each wait-day bucket by month (Jan–Mar). January is mixed; February and March consolidate into the 61–90 day band — the variance collapse ("freeze") seen as a shape change.
State Median Wait — Top 20 by Volume
Median wait for the 20 highest-volume states, annotated with sample size. Virginia runs high (median 30, highest mean); Arizona runs low (median 13). Variation is likely compositional rather than state-level processing.
Censoring Window by Pending Month
Observable wait window for the latest-pending item in each month vs. typical waits, with the share of Form 1 / Form 4 records pending too recently to surface a typical-length approval. Jan–Mar clear the bar; Apr–May fall short and are uninterpretable as trend.
Charts are static data products pinned to the June 1, 2026 snapshot, generated from community-submitted approval data. Temporal claims are confined to the fully observed cohorts; recent cohorts are subject to right-censoring. Read the methodology →