What’s the easiest way to ensure that a flight lands on time? The answer is an old trick that more airlines are turning to scrub flight delays.
It’s called schedule padding. Arriving on time is easy when you block four hours for a flight that only takes three. It allows for on-time arrivals even with departure delays, ground delays, and arrival delays. Furthermore, it prevents a ripple effect of delays by allowing a delayed flight to realistically make up time and thereby not delay the aircraft’s next segment.
Last month I was on a United flight from Los Angeles to Seattle, blocked at 2hr, 50min. We made it up to Seattle in about two, circled the airport for 45 minutes due to bad weather, and still landed on time.
Now you could look at that as a validation of schedule padding, but look the flip side as well. When there are not unforeseen delays a plane arrives early. Gates may not be open, leading to extreme annoyance when passengers sit waiting for a gate for 20-30 minutes only to be told they are still on-time. Even when a gate is open immediately, connecting passengers encounter a longer waits and aircraft are not fully utilized. It starts to add up.
But now there’s a new reason for schedule padding: to avoid compensation. The Guardian reports on a growing trend in Europe by airlines to “travel slower.” Airlines have all sorts of excuses to explain why. Ryanair says it flies slower to burn less fuel, thus helping the environment and allowing the budget carrier to offer cheaper fees. British Airways blames increased traffic congestion in the European skies for its schedule padding.
Perhaps both are valid reasons. But most consumers see right through these. Average flight times are up on 87% of British Airways flights, 82% for Ryanair, 75% for Virgin Atlantic, and 62% for easyJet. Even that disparity suggests there is something rotten in Denmark…
CONCLUSION
This is hardly a new issue. I wrote about it more than eight years ago. Schedule padding will always be part of commercial air travel. But using schedule padding as deliberate trick to avoid delayed flight compensation is a new trick. Interestingly, it may not even be working: flight delays were way up this summer across Europe. Perhaps we have even more padding to look forward to in the months ahead.
> Read More: 7 Hours to go from JFK to LAX on Delta Air Lines? The Wisdom of Schedule Padding
Adding additional time to a flight is very expensive for an airline but its a necessary evil. Adding this “padding” as you call it, restricts using the aircraft for our flights/routes, requirement to pay crews and other staffing for the flight, etc. If airlines had 100% on time arrivals, then you might say there’s padding.
If the flight was scheduled for 2 hours and was always late except for 1, would you say they padded the schedule? At what point do you draw the line? Flights take different amounts of time depending upon weather, winds, congestion, altitude, etc.
“Please take your seats quickly so we can have an on time departure.”
(hurry up and wait)
I purposely slow down, screw em
Flight crew are paid only when the door is closed, so if there’s a delay, they don’t get paid.
Waiting for a gate to open would mean more paid time for the crew, so they delay the flight as much as possible. I’ve been on flights that were delayed over 5 hours, but arrived 3 hours and 50 minutes after the scheduled arrival, so they wouldn’t have to compensate anyone under the EU law.
I don’t know – I’ve never really had a problem with schedule padding. If you want to look at the flip side, just look at how abysmal Southwest’s on-time performance is because they still try to maximize utilization as much as possible. Whenever I fly them, I go in knowing I’m going to have to sit around the gate area for an extra 15 minutes because it’s impossible for them to complete the quick turn when the incoming aircraft is already running late – but you can’t really go anywhere, either, because boarding could start at any moment. Personally, I find that much more annoying as a passenger than the 1-in-4 chance of arriving so early that there’s no gate.
Yeah, on the one hand it’s a little bit “dishonest”.
But, since they’re providing scheduled departure and arrival times upon which one is relying to schedule their own meetings/appointments, etc., or for which connections are being constructed (by those savvy enough to take a “DIY” approach to booking flights), then even with the padding, they’re providing the information needed for their passengers to make their own plans by, and as such, I see no reason to be bitching and moaning about this, or to be seeking compensation from the airline!
Ditto for arriving early and waiting for a gate to open up – Womp! Womp!
Yeah, it’s annoying to feel close to the end of the flight, yet so far, while waiting on the tarmac.
But again, even with the wait on the tarmac for the gate to open up for an “early” arrival, if the plane rolls up to the gate and the door opens within the 14 mins “grace period” such that the flight is deemed “on time” for the published scheduled arrival time, then so be it – the flight’s on time.
I mean seriously, as much I’d be the first to call out our greedy, sleazy, shady, and often very dishonest airlines for their many, and increasingly common “sins” (and have, often with epically long “rants” …hehehe 😉 ), even I cannot find anything wrong with our airlines “padding” their schedules to evade liability for compensation payments for delayed flights.
In fact, I believe they’re well within their rights to do so!
Obviously, someone with a green eye shade, an Excel spreadsheet and an advanced degreee in mathematics crunched the numbers and determined that the cost for longer scheduled block times to pay crews, plus whatever expenses for keeping the engines burning fuel circling, or idling on the tarmac waiting for a gate to open up, costs the airline less in hard dollars, pounds, euros, etc., and/or is close enough in cost such that the hassle factor of processing and paying claims for late arrivals, not to mention other industry performance metrics that measure on time percentages and brand reputation/goodwill, etc., justifies padding many airlines’ schedules!
Hm… while I do get the frustration of lounging around on tarmac, exit in sight, I don’t agree that it’s a big issue. Especially for crowded airports it makes total sense to me.
Let’s look at it like that: say your mother lives 55 miles away. The way there is a highway that lets you travel 55 miles an hour. Yet you‘ll never be there in an hour if you stick to speed limits. Some days it’s 70 minutes, someday it’s 90. so you‘ll usually prepare for 90 and tell her that time. If you’re early you‘re mom most likeliest happy. Someday she might take a shower before and not be quite ready – but hey, it’s your mom. Same basic principle – just that your nur crunched in between two smelly germans.
As you mentioned Europe (and the large delays this year) lets have a look at Ryanair on a very hipothetical level.
Ryanair has a turnaround of 25 minutes and a Ryanair 737 has about 46 flights a week. Assuming they don’t use padding (which they do) and would like to introduce that it would could flights to roughly 36 flights per aircraft per week.
With 189 seats per plane and a loadfactor of 94+ percent this is 8142 passengers per week vs. 6751.
Ryanair’s Tickets overall are sold at an average of 39 €. That’s 317538 € vs 248508 €. Bummer.
Then again: assuming of the 46 flights 10 are late enough for compensation vs only 2 of the 36 and 25 % of passengers make a claim (for short haul compensation) that would mean compensation at 110625 € for 46 flights, or 22125 € for the 36 flights.
In all: 10 more flights would earn 69030 € more but also possibly count for 88500 € in compensation. No brainier isn’t it?
I guess it comes down to the point where flying can be an annoying and lengthy procedure and every minute it fells it’s longer than it has to is a pain. Nevertheless i‘ll Rather hang around tarmac for 20 minutes than actually arrive 20 minutes later than advertised.
What in the world did I just read……
Dude, you are freaking awesome !! There are only a little box of people that will “get ” you. It’s not the stoners, it’s not the “I fit in a little box of OCD” types. And you know what I’m talking about. You would be the hugest hit if you could put this into a routine. HONESTLY !!
This is the “block time game” and it’s been going on forever. There are checks and balances.
It costs more to increase the block time. Crew pay is more because crew aren’t just paid based on when the door closes and opens but it’s also for how long the flight is scheduled. Also, a longer block time pushes the flight down on the GDS display screens compared to other flights and that means fewer bookings. Increasing block time means lower aircraft utilization. And finally, it also means the connection times at hubs have to be longer too.
If you shrink block time, then there are rolling delays. An inability to meet your schedule. You slip down the rankings. Pay more compensation. Etc., Etc.
None of this is new and it’s been going on for a long, long time.