Statistical Comparison of Passenger Trip Delay and Flight Delay Metrics

Abstract

The primary objective of the National Airspace System (NAS) is the transportation of passengers and cargo. Since passenger trip time performance is positively correlated with passenger satisfaction, airfare elasticity, and airline profits, it follows that the evaluation of performance and modernization of the NAS, as well as consumer protection, should be based on passenger trip performance (in addition to airline flight performance). Publicly available regulatory measures of NAS performance, however, are based on flight data and not passenger trip data. Researchers have demonstrated that the trip delays experienced by passengers disrupted by missed connections, canceled flights, and diverted flights are not negligible. Further, research demonstrated that flight delays are a poor proxy for measuring passenger trip delays. A comparative statistical analysis is described between flight delay data and estimated passenger trip delay data for 1 year's worth of flights on the 1,030 single-segment routes between the 35 [airports of FAA's Operational Evolution Partnership (OEP)]. The estimated passenger trip data are derived from publicly available databases and account for delays experienced by passengers on single-segment routes because of canceled flights as well as delayed flights. The statistical analysis indicates that (a) the estimated percentage of on-time passengers is equal to the percentage of on-time flights plus the percentage of canceled flights, (b) the estimated average passenger trip delay is 34 min in excess of the average flight delay, and (c) estimated average passenger trip delay for the worst 5% of delayed passengers is 150 min in excess of the flight delay. The implications of these results for consumers, industry performance measures, and FAA modernization efforts are discussed.