Trends in airline passenger trip delays (2007 – 2009)

Delays in arrival of airline passengers should be the on-time performance metric of the airline passenger transportation system (not flight delays). A passenger trip can experience arrival delays, relative to the ticketed arrival time, as a result of a delayed flight, as well as a diverted flight, cancelled flight, denied boarding, and/or missed connection. This paper describes the results of analysis of annual passenger trip delays for U.S. domestic airline flights from 2007 to 2009. These results are based on estimated itineraries and load factors, and actual airline (flight) on-time performance data available from government websites. From 2007 to 2009, there has been a 32% decline in annual passenger trips. The airlines have responded by cutting back flights by 14% and reducing seat capacity. Total passenger trip delay dropped 43% during this period in part due to fewer trips and in part due to reduced congestion. Cancelled flights accounted for 39% of the total trip delays, delayed flights contributed 44% of the total, and missed connections contributed 16%. Despite the reduction in total trip delays, the passenger experience did not improve. In 2009, 18 out of 100 passengers experienced a trip disruption of, on average, 105 minutes. In contrast, in 2007, 22 out of 100 passengers experienced a trip disruption of, on average, 116 minutes. Passengers on cancelled flights, dependent on load factors and frequency of service for rebooking, experienced the highest average trip delays of approximately 10 hours. The continued poor passenger trip performance is indicative of the limitations of the design of the transportation system that relies on reserve capacity to compensate for poor reliability in flight performance. The implications of this limitation are discussed.