Why Airlines Make Flights Longer On Purpose (bbc.com)

dryriver shares a report from the BBC: In the 1960s it took five hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles, and just 45 minutes to hop from New York to Washington, DC. Today, these same flights now take six-plus hours and 75 minutes respectively, although the airports haven't moved further apart. It's called "schedule creep," or padding. And it's a secret the airlines don't want you to know about, especially given the spillover effects for the environment. Padding is the extra time airlines allow themselves to fly from A to B. Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations.

"On average, over 30% of all flights arrive more than 15 minutes late every day despite padding," says Captain Michael Baiada, president of aviation consultancy ATH Group citing the U.S. Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report. The figure used to be 40% but padding -- not operational improvements -- boosted on-time arrival rates. 'By padding, airlines are gaming the system to fool you." He says if instead airlines tackled operational issues, customers would directly benefit. "Padding drives higher costs in fuel burn, noise and CO2 which means if airline efficiency goes up, costs go down, benefitting both the environment and fares."

Comments

Re:questionable logic

[LynnwoodRooster]

If anything, it should REDUCE the CO2 emissions, because if you have 30 minutes to "kill" on a long leg, you can fly slower - and since losses go as the square of velocity, a small reduction in airspeed really saves quite a bit of fuel. In fact, that's why the A380 is "slow" across the Pacific - it flies slower so it saves more fuel than a B777/787 doing the same trip (15 hours from LAX to CAN versus 13-13.5 for the Boeing planes).

Re:Realistic number

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

The airline schedule is self reported by the air line. It is simply a truth-in-advertising, truth-in-labeling compliance.

Electric car mileage is not a self reported thing by the company. It is tested and certified by a government agency. Heard YMMV? Why is that? Everyone knows YMMV. It is basically a comparison tool. If you want to compare the fuel costs of two vehicles, you compare their reported MPG rating. To compare electric car with a gasoline car you compare the MPGe with MPG. It is still an imperfect tool. Gas prices and electricity prices vary a lot all over the country.

To compare two electric cars you compare the EPA tested miles. Again, there is no guarantee you will actually achieve the reported range, but under similar circumstances, EPA rated 300 mile car will go double the distance of a EPA rated 150 miles car. That is all it is useful for.