Great news for fliers who frequently purchase cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages. Runway delays of three hours or more have decreased markedly. There was only one runway delay in excess of three hours in August vs. 66 last year during the same month.
There have been 11 runway delays in excess of three hours between May and August this year vs. 548 such delays last year for the same four month span.
The single delay was a United flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Dulles on August 5th, extending a single digit trend this year of runway delays that began in April, immediately before the Department of Transportation implemented its three hour runway delay rule for domestic flights on U.S. carriers.
Cancellations in August remained at one percent, the same as it had been in August of 09. This rate showed a significant improvement over May (1.24 percent), June (1.5 percent) and July (1.43 percent). August was the first month of the new rule where the monthly cancelation rate was not higher than last year for the same month.
This runway rule heavily financially penalizes airlines for keeping planes on runways for three or more hours. Before the rule was implemented the airlines came out aggressively against it, warning that it would lead to significantly more flight cancellations. Instead, there has only been a relatively minor increase in the flight cancellation rate.
On a percentage basis, total flight cancellations have been consistently below the 15 year average for the months between May and August.
Perhaps the lesson for airline regulators is that by telling airlines that they cannot continue certain practices without a significant cost to themselves, problems previously thought insolvable can in fact be effectively dealt with.
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