HOW TO REDUCE DELAYS ON PASSENGER AIRCRAFT: A STUDY OVER NON-WEATHER-RELATED ISSUES

Abstract

Delays are contentious and a chronic issue that affects millions of air-travel passengers in the world. Delays have effects that can follow passengers from one airport to another on a multiple leg journey. Weather delays are different from airline arrival delays. It is obvious that weather delays are uncontrollable and unpredictable. Severe thunderstorms can force airline schedulers to cancel flights that may cause arrival delays for flight passengers. A collection of six years of flight delay data from Bureau of Transportation Statistics was used for three airlines, namely American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and Southwest Airlines, at four different airports (Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport, O'Hare International Airport, Midway International Airport, and Nashville International Airport). The purpose of this study was to determine whether there is any correlation between Hub-and-Spoke and Point-to-Point systems that can be associated with arrival delays on travel passengers from the above airlines with regards to their associated hub airports.