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

Posted by BeauHD on from the behind-the-scenes dept.

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."

9 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Realistic number by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, instead of reporting the best possible time that they can only occasionally achieve in ideal conditions, they are now reporting times they can usually achieve. I wish electric car manufacturers would start doing that for their cars ranges. If I recall, airlines did not start doing this until they started to be fined for being late.

    1. Re:Realistic number by Kohath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Basically, yeah. They are telling the truth (more or less) about how long the travel takes now.

    2. Re:Realistic number by Obfuscant · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Only on /. would people complain that a corporation is being more honest about the time it takes to get from point A to point B.

      Airlines used to plan best-case travel times, and many times that didn't happen. That could be for any number of reasons having nothing at all to do with their operations. Diverting around weather, lineups for departure, delays for landing due to weather, etc. Airlines aren't just flying around in circles to waste gas because they're 15 minutes early and have to arrive exactly on the padded arrival time, and being late impacts much more than just the people on that one flight.

      Outside of major issues, most of the flights I have been on have arrived early. It is actually a Good Thing when something does delay a flight and it still arrives on schedule. It's actually a Great Thing when a small delay in departure can result in no delay in arrival. It's a Really Bad Day when a plane arrives too late to make connections, because that can result in multi-day delays in people getting to final destinations.

  2. It makes me feel good when I'm early... by Arzaboa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know this stuff is padded, and I think its great.

    I do the same thing when I'm the driver of any trip. I plan for 9am, tell everyone else to be ready by 7:30am or 8am, and when we get a 'head-start' of 15 minutes everyone is happy. It helps when 'life' is baked into these times. I don't want to stress because someone takes an extra five minutes moving a luggage cart. I am not going to complain if I arrived in Chicago 'early.' Airline route times are there for customer service and this saves me so many headaches on the back-end that I call it one of the perks. Quiet time.

    --
    One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening. -- Franklin P. Jones

    1. Re:It makes me feel good when I'm early... by msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What you describe is one of the few things good about Disney - underpromise/overdeliver. When you're in line and the sign says you have a 30 minute wait for a ride, it's realistically more like 20. If it's less than they say you're happy, if it's more you're pissed.

      But yeah, the article/summary is extremely biased. "Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays..." is just a biased way of saying they realized they were wrong, and fixed it. And it completely ignores the importance of schedules when there are connecting flights - I'd much rather sit at a gate for an extra 15 minutes than miss a connection and have to wait hours.

      No, they're not wasting fuel and melting glaciers. Time is money, and they want to get there as soon as they can. But there are lots of moving parts not under direct control (think weather, equipment issues, and other airlines). The summary's comparison to 50 years ago is simple ignorance (at best, otherwise deliberate misrepresentation) - there are now way more flights and there's way more complexity/chaos to affect flight times.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  3. questionable logic by whizzard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the summary, at least, it sure doesn't seem like this guy knows what he's talking about:

    Padding drives higher costs in fuel burn, noise and CO2

    Padding the schedule, alone, clearly can't change the amount of fuel that is used to get from point A to point B.

  4. Conspiracy level bullshit by topham · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This article is conspiracy level bullshit. Correcting schedules for realistic time isn't about not fixing things that can be fixed, it's about accepting those that can't.

    There isn't an airline on the planet that wouldn't choose to save fuel costs if given the chance.

  5. Re:Airline scheduling by sycodon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, This is just stupid bitching from someone who had to write a column.

    Airlines aren't flying slower to pad the schedule. Flights don't take six hours, they take the same about of time. The schedules just allow for unforeseen circumstances...weather, maintenance, etc.

    I have no problem at all waiting for the plane to be made safe and ready to go, delays for weather, etc. SAFETY is what is important, not getting there on time. An airliner is not a fucking bus. You can't just pull over and unload people while you deal with a mechanical issue. If they want to add an hour to the schedule and then get there early, so be it. You shouldn't be scheduling your activities so tightly to flights.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  6. Re:Airline scheduling by omfglearntoplay · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have a feeling it has more to do with sharing runways with more flights, sharing air traffic control with more flights, and sharing the air with more flights.

    If you had 100 flights a day in the 1960s out of airport X, and now you have 5000 flights out of that same airport... somehow I don't think they expanded the airport enough to keep up.