An Analysis of Passenger Delays Using Flight Operations and Passenger Booking Data

The performance metric used to evaluate on-time performance in the US airline industry is flight-based, measuring the number of flight legs with arrival delay of 15 minutes or more. We analyze airline passenger operations and schedule performance and conclude that this flight-based performance metric does not accurately reflect delays to passengers, primarily because it does not recognize the long passenger delays resulting from flight leg cancellations and missed connections. Using passenger bookings and flight operations data from a major US airline, we develop a Passenger Delay Calculator to compute passenger delays and to establish relationships between passenger delays and cancellation rates, flight leg delay distributions, load factors, and flight schedule design. Using the insights gained in our analysis, we define new passenger-centric metrics to address the shortcomings of existing flight-based metrics and more accurately evaluate schedule reliability.