Identification of possible reasons that affect departure flight punctuality

Abstract

A flight is said to be delayed when an airline flight takes off and/or lands later than its scheduled time. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) considers a flight to be delayed when it is 15 minutes later than its scheduled time. Punctuality is one of the key performance indicators in the airline industry and an important service differentiator especially for valuable high-yield customers. In addition, improved on-time performance can help achieve significant cost savings. This is a critical issue in the air transportation industry since it generates lot of problems to the operation and the inconvenience for the passengers. Once a delay is occurred, it is totally affect to the entire airline network and it will then effect to the passengers. Flight delays are an inconvenience to passengers. A delayed flight can be costly to passengers by making them late to their personal scheduled events. A passenger who is delayed on a multi-plane trip could miss a connecting flight. Anger and frustration can occur in delayed passengers. Hence airlines are always interested in making delays a minimum. This study focuses on identification of possible reasons for departure flight punctuality and a case study carried out on the National Carrier of Sri Lanka is presented. Attention was given to identification of departure flight delays, identifying critical delay types and finding their reasons based on Srilankan Airlines monthly delay reports. The findings of the analysis represents that there are 6% of Technical delays, 9% of Unavoidable delays, and 8% of Airport delays and 5% of Air Traffic Control delays out of average departure delays per day. The average delay time due to technical delays is 1.22hrs and average delay due to uncontrollable delays such as weather, late reporting of crew due to road traffic ant etc. is 0.34 hrs. Airport facility delays contribute on average 0.16hrs and average delay due to and of Air Traffic Control is 0.10 hrs per departure flight.