Price tag on delayed flights in the billions of dollars
If you’ve ever wondered how much flight delays cost passengers, there’s now a number: US$16.7 billion.
So says the Federal Aviation Administration who found that number when figuring the annual cost of planes being delayed.
“The total cost to passengers, airlines and other parts of the economy is $32.9 billion, according to the FAA-commissioned report. More than half that amount comes from the pockets of passengers who lose time waiting for their planes to leave and then spend money scrounging for food and sleeping in hotel rooms while they’re stranded, among other costs,” said the Washington Post.
The report is the most comprehensive so far on the true cost of flight delays because of the method it used to calculate the costs, said Mark Hansen, a civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley who led the study.
Other research, Hansen said, would assume that a plane with 100 passengers that’s delayed for 10 minutes costs 1,000 minutes in total. In reality, he said, the ripple effects of that delay can be far worse for passengers, who lose countless more hours when they miss connecting flights.
"We knew that passengers’ costs were being underestimated by using the more simplistic approach," said Cynthia Barnhart, interim dean and professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Engineering.
The researchers also calculated that airlines spend $8.3 billion on higher expenses for their crew, fuel and maintenance. Airlines also lose money because they build delays into their schedules, causing them to run fewer flights.
"This report underscores…that flight delays drive billions of dollars in added costs, both to our airlines and ultimately to their customers," said James C. May, president and chief executive of the American Transportation Association.
By David Wilkening
David
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