In what it calls a passenger-centric approach to studying delays, Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed airline scheduling is largely to blame for the massive delays experienced this summer. In fact, MIT reports that delays, in terms of passenger waits, are two-thirds longer than official statistics indicate. Indeed, George Mason University suggested that 39 percent of man-hours lost to delays go unreported. The reports beg the question of what to do about it, whether the hub-and-spoke system has become too saturated and what would happen if schedules were reduced.

Quantifying the Problem
MIT’s conclusion comes as no surprise since past gridlock crises proved that airline scheduling has as much to do with delays and cancellations as does an antiquated ATC system or weather. In fact the summers of 1987, 1997 and 2000 reveal an all-too-familiar pattern. Previous crises reached a point at which, suddenly, the consumer and political will was there to do something about it. Then the economy tanked, eroding consumer demand and political will, as well as the number of flights in the system.
The FAA’s own rulemaking on LaGuardia reveals what happened after the High Density Rule was eliminated at LaGuardia, a notoriously congested airport. After AIR-21 became effective in 2000, airlines rushed in with more than 300 flights by the fall of that year. The average minutes of delay for all arriving flights at LaGuardia increased 144 percent. The increase was not limited to LaGuardia. By September 2000, flight delays at LaGuardia accounted for 25 percent of the nation’s delays, compared to 10 percent for the previous year. This resulted in capping operations which allowed an increase but reigned in the chaos that resulted from unfettered access. The cap has been extended several times since then until made permanent January 1. Related Story
But this is not just ancient history given what happened at Kennedy this year after limitations were lifted. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey reported that flights at Kennedy jumped 26.4 percent at the already-congested facility in the first four months of 2007, versus an increase in passengers of 12.9 percent. So, the airlines went in with new schedules with the full knowledge they would increase delays. LaGuardia actually decreased by one percent compared to an increase of 6.9 percent at Newark which had never been under the High Density Rule.
But this does not condemn hub-and-spoke operations, according to David Beckerman, director, consulting services at BACK Aviation Solutions, who points out that the worst delays do not occur at such airports. While pointing to LaGuardia, Ft. Lauderdale, O’Hare and Newark as having delay problems, he indicated they are offset by more efficient airports such as Denver, Charlotte and Phoenix. He also suggested that many spoke cities need additional service that could feed into smaller hubs provided the traffic was there to make it profitable.
Seemingly, hub congestion would increase point-to-point operations. However, Beckerman said that a review of the BACK airline schedules database reveals that while there has been a slightly greater increase in point-to-point flying, it isn’t coming from mainline carriers. He indicated there are 3.4 percent more point-to-point flights from 2006 to 2007 versus a 2.1 percent increase for the hub airports. However, the 10 main U.S. hub carriers – American (AMR), Alaska (ALK), Continental (CAL), Delta (DAL), Northwest (NWA), United (UAUA), USAirways (LCC), AirTran (AAI), Frontier (FRNT), Midwest (MEH) – have actually been making increased use of their hubs by 5.1 percent, including regional affiliates, and decreasing the amount of point-to-point flying by 1.8 percent in terms of the number of flights. Consequently, it is the non-hub airlines – Allegiant, ExpressJet (XJT), JetBlue (JBLU), and Southwest (LUV) – that are responsible for the overall point-to-point increase. He analyzed the BACK airline schedules database to determine the number of flights from hubs and the number between non-hubs. He used the carriers’ own definition of hubs, which includes 22 airports but counts some big airports such as LAX, LaGuardia and Washington National as non hubs because flights are not scheduled in a hub complex.

The MIT Report
What the MIT study did was to quantify the problem in terms of the passenger experience instead of airline operations, which makes a miserable situation, even worse. The problem, says MIT, is how delays are reported. When counting disrupted passengers – which include both canceled and delayed flights – the average delay rises about 66 percent from 15.4 minutes to 25.6 minutes. What was surprising about her report was the assertion that if this were addressed, delays could be reduced by 40 percent, according to Cynthia Barnhart, who did the study and appeared on Good Morning America. Related Story
She indicated that flights held for long hours on taxiways before being canceled are not part of official statistics nor are diverted flights which prompted the Coalition for an Airline Passenger's Bill of Rights and some in Congress, to push for making such reporting mandatory.
Government statistics only capture the lateness of a flight, rather than how long it actually takes a passenger to reach their destination. Barnhart indicated that a 15-minute delay could stretch to nine hours if missed connections are counted, largely owing to full flights, which makes it harder for airlines to accommodate delayed passengers. Calculating the actual length of a door-to-door trip would mean delving into passenger privacy. However, Barnhart suggested concentrating on delays of 45 minutes or more would capture the missed connections and give a better idea of the passenger disruption.
Lance Sherry, an associate professor of operations research at George Mason University, reported on ABC News that a quarter of passengers traveled on delayed flights accounting for 66 million hours of delays. Cancelled flights, impacting 1.4 percent of passengers, accounted for 42 million hours of delay. He indicated that, since these are not counted, 39 percent of all man-hours lost to delays go unreported by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
"The purpose of the air transportation system is to move passengers and cargo,” he told ABC. “But the DOT and FAA treat the system as one that moves airplanes, and as a consequence they only report airport or flight-specific performance."
Barnhart is updating her study to counter government statistics on delays. The BTS released its latest report this week revealing a quarter of all flights arrived late in May. While one could view that as the glass half full since more three-fourths of flights arrived on time, BTS said that the May record, as well as that for the first five months, was the industry’s worst performance for that month since 2004. In May, only 78 percent of all flights arrived on time and only 74 percent during the first five months. That ranked as the smallest percentage in the 12-year history of government tracking of such performance. ATA reports that such delays cost the industry $16 billion annually with wasted fuel and inefficient management of aircraft and crews.
DOT recently held a meeting to address the problems with its consumer statistics, including merging regional and mainline statistics. Related Story
Current statistics are as confusing as they are supposed to be helpful. Part of the problem is the fact that there is no true picture of how bad things are, according to MIT. Nor are they transparent as to the exact cause of delays, especially important for regionals who are unnecessarily blamed for the actions of their major partners.

Solutions Not Easy to Find
If airline schedules are to blame, then perhaps airlines should cut back. But, according to Beckerman, cutting back would not solve the problem of the time spent in traveling door to door. “Despite highly publicized frustrations caused by congestion in parts of the system,” he said, “a reduction in schedules would result in increased travel time between many disparate markets that have minimal or nonstop service because the number of connecting opportunities would be reduced. Mid- and small-size communities would be adversely affected” and, by extension, the regional airlines that serve them. But perhaps more reliability is worth it.
Fares would rise as well, but that may already be happening. While airlines have a spotty record in being able to raise fares, there are other ways to go about it, according to Beckerman. “More commonly airlines limit the number of discount seats sold,” he said. “Revenue management systems evaluate the likelihood that more expensive fares will be sold as capacity becomes more constrained. If the likelihood is low, it would be counter-productive to hold out for that expensive seat and instead let more low priced seats be sold – basically if selling more cheap seats brings higher revenue, you do that, otherwise you hold out for the higher priced sale. The best situation is when you fill every seat at the most expensive fare – that’s never counter-productive.”
All this puts increasing focus on regional airlines, according to Beckerman, who indicated the most expedient measure adopted by many airlines to mitigate over-scheduling, is to increase the size of regional aircraft in many markets moving from 50-seat to 70-seat variants. “In a market served four times daily, one frequency can be eliminated (meaning one less plane in the air) with no loss of overall capacity,” he said. “Unfortunately, use of less congested hubs is not easily done if there is no strong local demand at the hub. More point-to-point services are possible, but they do not reduce congestion if one of the end points has heavy demand. For example, a flight from Peoria to LaGuardia will only add to existing congestion at the latter airport. To reduce the effects of disruption and maximize ground staff productivity, more airlines can adopt policies that encourage passengers to pack efficiently and discourage bag checking, especially by charging for checked baggage. Delta and American over the past several years modified their respective Atlanta and Dallas hubs to be rolling hubs in which the all-in/all-out waves were reduced and spread through the day to prevent situations in which planes have to be held to wait for lots of connecting passengers.”
Regardless of the solutions, nothing will come fast enough for the passengers. With mainline carriers just resuming profitable operations, we have to hope that the answer doesn't come with the tanking of the economy as has happened three times before although the mainline carriers would likely rely more on their regional partners if that does happen.