ANALYSIS OF DOWNSTREAM IMPORTS OF AIR TRAFFIC DELAY

Reduction of air carrier flight delay in the U.S. National Airspace System (NAS) has been a major objective of the FAA for many years. Much of the current delay arises from weather induced delays at airports. When a plane is delayed on one of the day's flights, there can be a carryover delay that affects later flights by that aircraft. In this report, statistical models were developed to predict: the 'downstream' delays that occur when a flight experiences an initial delay; and, the likelihood of flight cancellation as a function of the initial delay. Using historical airline reported delays for December 1993, it was concluded that the mean 'downstream' delay is approximately 80% of the initial delay, i.e., the net delay for an aircraft due to an initial flight delay is approximately 1.8 x the initial delay.