Evaluating airline delays : the role of airline networks, schedules, and passenger demands

In this thesis, we develop a framework for analyzing airlines' operational performances under different strategic decisions. A detailed study is conducted to compare differences between a major U.S. legacy carrier and a major U.S. low-cost carrier in terms of their scheduling practices, flight-based delays and on-time performances, network operations and mix of passengers, as well as passenger delays and disruptions. One major contribution of this thesis is that the framework we develop to evaluate airlines' performances is not restricted by the availability of proprietary airline data and can be adopted to estimate itinerary-based passenger demand for any U.S. airline included in the Bureau of Transportation Statistics database. Moreover, in this thesis, we compute delay for local and connecting passengers and provide a powerful tool for scenario analysis. Further, we: (1) identify root causes of delays as well as the impact throughout the network; (2) gain insights about how passenger delay can be reduced with different scheduling practices; and (3) guide the design of on-time performance metrics. Differences in scheduling practices, network operations, passenger mix, aircraft delays, and passenger delays between different airlines arise from carrier-specific characteristics. These characteristics should be considered when designing on-time performance metrics.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Zhu, Ying, S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Cynthia Barnhart.

• Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/47775

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/47775