Ten years ago, the average scheduled flight time from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to Los Angeles International Airport was 6 hours and 1 minute. This summer, flights connecting the two major markets are scheduled to average 6 hours and 20 minutes.
The citypair is just one of hundreds for which airlines have lengthened the estimated journey time, and—although reduced capacity and falling traffic have played a part—the Department of Transportation inspector general cited such practices among the key factors in airlines' best on-time performances in years.
"Although this practice led to a perceived decline in flight delays," DOT inspector general Calvin Scovel III noted in a report last month, "it resulted in an increase in average flight time." In other words, it will take travelers longer to get to their destinations, but at least they'll be on time.
Airlines increased flight times on two-thirds of the 2,500 domestic routes examined by Scovel last month, and a similar pattern was shown in a snapshot of 20 popular routes provided to Business Travel News by OAG. Some show scheduled flight times in the past 10 years increasing by 18 percent.
Scovel reports that only 22 percent of flights experienced delays for the last six months of 2008—an improvement from the 27 percent rate in 2007. Carriers continue to post year-over-year on-time performance improvements this year. According to FlightStats data released this month, nearly 80 percent of flights operated by U.S. airlines arrived on time in May. FlightStats noted that U.S. airline on-time performance has improved every month this year compared with the same periods in 2007 and 2008.
Air Transport Association chief economist John Heimlich during the Masters program in Washington, D.C., this year called the trend of elongating scheduled flight times "schedule creep" and described it as a catch-22 for carriers. "If we're scheduling to reflect reality, we're padding the schedule, but if we're scheduling more aggressively, then it's false advertising," Heimlich said. "It's classic damned if you do, damned if you don't."
Heimlich continued, "What I used to schedule for maybe 65 minutes, I now put at 75 minutes, because it would now be misleading and problematic to say otherwise. Now if I do 75 minutes, I'm not delayed. I'm on time, even if it takes 15 minutes more than it used to."
Though the practice can create perceptions of better performance, it also can be more costly to carriers. Since labor contracts typically "dictate that we pay the crews the maximum of the scheduled time or the actual time," Heimlich said, increasing the scheduled flight time also increases crew costs.
"There really isn't any official time when a given flight should arrive," said Michael Boyd, president of aviation consultancy The Boyd Group International. "The Federal Aviation Administration talks about 'delays' as if there is a federally produced timetable to which airlines must adhere. There's no such animal." A delay is defined as a plane arriving 15 minutes after the time scheduled by the airline. "The airlines determine how long it will take, and that varies by airline, by time of day, by marketing strategy and a host of other issues," Boyd said.
Airlines, analysts and even the DOT inspector general attribute the phenomenon to an air traffic control system that has been unable to keep pace with traffic.
Faced with what Boyd calls an "inept" air traffic control system, "airlines are scheduling more time into their flights, knowing that the system will often not allow direct routings, or will involve ATC holds or flight slowdowns."
Boyd's conclusion: "Most flights are 'delayed' even when they arrive on schedule, because the system does not allow them to fly as efficiently as they can."
During its annual shareholders meeting last month, chairman and CEO Gerard Arpey noted American Airlines has lengthened block times, "the period when a plane starts to move at departure until the parking brake is set at the arrival gate," and stretched the time aircraft spend on the ground between flights to boost on-time performance.
Arpey attributed the practice in part to "an overloaded, outdated air traffic control system and airport capacities set beyond reasonable limits." Contending with that, Arpey said, "American added time to its schedule to be able to get customers and their belongings to their intended destinations on time and without hassle. The added time to the schedule also benefited customers by providing them better information that allows them to plan their travel with more predictability."
Scheduling practices are hardly the only reason for widespread improvement in airline on-time performance. Slashed airline capacity and declining air passenger traffic also are playing key roles in improving on-time performance, the DOT inspector general found.
Scovel said improvements were "primarily driven by flight cutbacks that airlines implemented in the face of last year's unprecedented fuel prices and onset of the global economic downturn." For the last three months in 2008, traffic declined by about 10 percent from the same period in 2007, DOT figures show.
Though DOT since 2007 has implemented a variety of initiatives to curb delays stemming from capacity-constrained airports, Scovel said there is no evidence they have contributed to the reduction in delays.
Scovel agreed that fixing air traffic control is the linchpin to managing delays. "Enhancing capacity and reducing delays systemwide ultimately depends on the development and implementation of the Next Generation Air Traffic Management System," he noted. "However, this is a long-term, complex effort that will require billion-dollar investments from both FAA and airspace users."
In the meantime, the government has implemented what it characterizes as some short-term fixes to the transportation system. At the behest of President George W. Bush, DOT in 2007 embarked on a crusade against congestion, following a summer season marred by high passenger volumes and rampant delays
(BTNonline, Oct. 8, 2007).By the end of that year, DOT's Aviation Rulemaking Committee recommended 77 initiatives to help curb delays—many centered on the highly congested New York City area. "While FAA reports that more than one-third of the initiatives are complete, most of these are not used or are used infrequently," Scovel said. "Moreover, it is not clear that the completed initiatives have actually reduced delays since FAA lacks a means to measure their impact."
As airline traffic this year is expected to remain below levels of recent years, and capacity continues to drop, Scovel expects on-time performance to "hold steady or improve further" in the short term.
However, once passenger volumes begin to return, so too will delays. "History shows that traffic will rebound given the intrinsic value of air transport to the nation's livelihood. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the current positive trend can be sustained," Scovel noted.
He said the waning of congestion offers an opportunity for FAA to "strategically position itself for a rebound in air travel, particularly at already congested airports."