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Why Airlines Make Flights Longer on Purpose (bbc.com)
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. BBC: 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.
It might seem innocuous enough to the passenger -- after all, what it can mean is that even though you take off late, you're pleasantly surprised to arrive on time at your destination. However, this global trend poses multiple problems: not only does your journey take longer but creating the illusion of punctuality means there's no pressure on airlines to become more efficient, meaning congestion and carbon emissions will keep rising. "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 US Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report.
It might seem innocuous enough to the passenger -- after all, what it can mean is that even though you take off late, you're pleasantly surprised to arrive on time at your destination. However, this global trend poses multiple problems: not only does your journey take longer but creating the illusion of punctuality means there's no pressure on airlines to become more efficient, meaning congestion and carbon emissions will keep rising. "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 US Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report.
to torture us
DUPE! DUPE! DUPE!
DUPE!
Back to the old days.
Star Trek, there maybe hope.
Yet another post from the dept-of-redundancy-dept.
BeauHD: Why Airlines Make Flights Longer On Purpose
msmash: Why Airlines Make Flights Longer on Purpose
"On" is not capitalized the same. Interesting.
Probably for the same reasons they did in the previous story on it.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Dupe from 13 hours ago
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/04/08/231224/why-airlines-make-flights-longer-on-purpose
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/04/08/231224/why-airlines-make-flights-longer-on-purpose
Yes. In the spirit of this post, my comment is a dupe of another dupe complaint.
So, what you're saying is that it has nothing at all to do with having to route many more planes through the same set of skies as were considered crowded 30+ years ago?
Yeah, sometimes it's as simple as "you can't fly straight from NYC to DC because there are already 49 flights using that airspace right now"....
Do try to remember that the airlines do NOT control ATC. Rather the reverse....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
...all the duplicate Slashdot articles.
How Slashtastic!
Rick B.
I'm not sure if I see the connection about carbon emisions. AFAIK, part of reasoning to increase the scheduled duration was to operate at a slower speed which was more fuel efficient. Additionally, most delays I have experienced would not have caused increased emissions as fuel was not being burned (weather-related delays excluded). I don't see how delays loading passangers/baggage, resolving mechanical issues, swapping a flight crew, or residual delays from a previous leg have any impact to carbon emissions.
Some of it is padding, but flying slower is more fuel efficient so longer flights actually use less fuel, not more (with some caveats around headwinds/tailwinds). Also pilots get paid based on scheduled flight times (at least on some airlines) so longer flight times increase payroll costs for airlines which balances out the desire for increasing on-time arrival percentages.