Passenger Trip Delays Statistics for 2010

The raison d'etre of the Airline Passenger Transportation System (APTS) is the rapid, affordable, and safe transportation of passengers (and cargo). The top-level performance measure of the system is passenger trip delay, defined as the difference between ticketed passenger arrival time and actual passenger arrival time. Passenger trip delay accounts for delays caused by cancelled flights, missed connections and diversions, as well as delayed flights. Algorithms developed to estimate passenger itineraries and passenger trip delay statistics using publicly available data were used to generate passenger trip delay statistics for 2010. In 2010 an estimated 421 million passengers ticketed on 46.8 million itineraries were transported on 8.7 million flights. Passenger on-time performance was 78.7%. The average delay for a disrupted passenger was 67 minutes. The total trip delay experienced by passengers in 2010 was 11,669 years. The largest contributors to total passenger trip delays were: passengers on direct itineraries disrupted by delayed flights - 32%, passengers on connecting itineraries disrupted by cancelled flights - 23%, connecting itineraries disrupted by delayed flights - 16%, and missed connections - 14%. Since 2007, annual passenger trip delay is down 26%, however in 2010 1-in-5 passengers experienced a trip disruption (compared to 1-in-4 in 2007) with an average delay for disrupted passengers of 67 minutes (73 minutes in 2007). These results highlight the important role the “structure” of the airline network, in addition to on-time flight performance, plays in determining passenger trip reliability, and have important implications for modernization and consumer protection initiatives.