While cheap fares, be they cheap airplane tickets, cheap vacation packages, or discount travel packages are highly valued sometimes they feel even better when your flight arrives on-time. In 2012 more flights arrived early (at least 15 minutes prior to scheduled arrival time) than were late, canceled, or diverted to an unplanned location.
Early flights please many passengers, whether because they give travelers extra time to make a connection or more time to meet up with friends at their destinations.
Part of the reason for more flights arriving early is from increased airline efficiency. However, another reason is airlines increasingly padding their flight schedules.
The average scheduled flight time in 2012 was longer on 93 percent of domestic routes than it was in 1995. Given than flights were more crowded than ever in 2012, one could reasonably expect more not fewer flight delays.
Scheduled flight times measure a trip from departure to arrival gate. By restating (i.e., delaying) projected arrival times, early flights often take longer than they did in the past. For example the average flight time from Bostons Logan airport to New Yorks LaGuardia was one hour in 1995 vs. 75 minutes in 2012.
Over the same time period Logan to LaGuardia early arrival rate has dramatically risen to 38 percent vs. 2 percent in 1995, with Delta and US Airways adding nearly 20 minutes to projected arrival times.
Early arrival rates now are greater than 30 percent on over 700 routes and go as high as 65 percent of a handful of routes raising the question of whether airlines are padding schedules too much and are costing themselves money as well as aggravating at least some passengers.
Early arrivals cost airlines money when they are forced to leave airplanes sitting idle and pay flight crews for more time than flights actually take when arrival gates are not ready to receive early flights.
A 2010 Federal Aviation Administration sponsored study estimated that schedule buffers in 2007 cost airlines $3.7 billion, almost as much as the cost of actual delays to airlines. Experts believe this cost has increased since then given that major airlines have added time to flight schedules since 2007 on 60 percent of domestic routes.
Passengers get frustrated when so much extra time has been added to a schedule that they are forced to take later connecting flights than would otherwise be possible if schedules were tighter.
Airports are profiting from the increase in early arrivals at airports where passengers are spending more time and money. Passenger spending on airport food and retail goods in 2012 was 20 percent more than in 2010.
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