Why Airlines Make Flights Longer on Purpose (bbc.com) 15
In the 1960s it took five hours to fly from New York to Los Angeles, and just 45 minutes to hop from New York to Washington, DC. Today, these same flights now take six-plus hours and 75 minutes respectively, although the airports haven't moved further apart. BBC: It's called "schedule creep," or padding. And it's a secret the airlines don't want you to know about, especially given the spillover effects for the environment. Padding is the extra time airlines allow themselves to fly from A to B. Because these flights were consistently late, airlines have now baked delays experienced for decades into their schedules instead of improving operations.
It might seem innocuous enough to the passenger -- after all, what it can mean is that even though you take off late, you're pleasantly surprised to arrive on time at your destination. However, this global trend poses multiple problems: not only does your journey take longer but creating the illusion of punctuality means there's no pressure on airlines to become more efficient, meaning congestion and carbon emissions will keep rising. "On average, over 30% of all flights arrive more than 15 minutes late every day despite padding," says Captain Michael Baiada, president of aviation consultancy ATH Group citing the US Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report.
It might seem innocuous enough to the passenger -- after all, what it can mean is that even though you take off late, you're pleasantly surprised to arrive on time at your destination. However, this global trend poses multiple problems: not only does your journey take longer but creating the illusion of punctuality means there's no pressure on airlines to become more efficient, meaning congestion and carbon emissions will keep rising. "On average, over 30% of all flights arrive more than 15 minutes late every day despite padding," says Captain Michael Baiada, president of aviation consultancy ATH Group citing the US Department of Transportation's Air Travel Consumer Report.
Dupe (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"On" is not capitalized the same. Interesting.
Great point. Maybe they should make IsThisaBrainDeadDupe() case-insensitive.
Why Airlines make flights longer (Score:3)
Probably for the same reasons they did in the previous story on it.
Nothing to do with... (Score:2)
So, what you're saying is that it has nothing at all to do with having to route many more planes through the same set of skies as were considered crowded 30+ years ago?
Yeah, sometimes it's as simple as "you can't fly straight from NYC to DC because there are already 49 flights using that airspace right now"....
Do try to remember that the airlines do NOT control ATC. Rather the reverse....
To make sure we have time to read... (Score:2)
Dupe? Doublet? Twin? (Score:2)
How Slashtastic!