Harvard University Researcher: Flying delay for three hours now four times more common than 1990

Among those who were cut off was the parents of Maxwell Tabaruk, in the city to help transfer him to Harvard Business College, where he completed his PhD in the economy. Tabaruk said luck It was fascinated by how the entire airport was developing haltNot because of some catastrophic events, but because of the prediction Hiccup Ripping through a tired system.

Therefore, doing what a good statistic will happen: diving into data. After analyzing more than 30 years – and 100 GB – transport statistics data, Find His parents’ situation was not bad: the long three -hour or more delays are now four times more common than they were 30 years ago.

Not only that, but Tabarrok found that airlines are trying to hide the delay by “filling” flight times, on average, an additional 20 minutes to the timelines, so the flight that did not get any faster is still “on time”. Thus, on paper, performance standards improved at the time specified since 1987, even as actual travel times are progressing.

“For 15 years, from 1987 to 2000, the actual and equipped times remained very close to each other,” said Tabarrok. “After that, starting from about 2000, they started to diverge – airlines made a very clear decision to start stuffing their schedules to avoid the shorter delay.”

Filling carries a hidden economic cost. Using the average American wage data, the additional minutes integrated into flights add up to 6 billion dollars at the time of the missing passengers annually, where the researcher was calculated.

Industry sources say that there are much more users in the national airspace system today more than decades ago. US Department of Transport Data The weather appears is the most common cause of non -linear delay. continuous loss From air traffic control units, along with modernity FAA power interruptionAnd it also disrupted operations around the world.

Systemic system is not proper

For Tabarrok, the root of the problem is not just a bad weather, ancient infrastructure, or even airline strategy: it is incentives. He argues that FAA does not have a good reason to quickly respond to the increasing delay because the agency does not bear the cost of the passengers, and they are not rewarded when airports work smoothly.

“I think the costs of delay can double, trilogy, quadruple over the next ten years. But has anyone negatively affected the federal aviation administration?” Tabaruk said. Maybe not.

He pointed to the lack of air traffic monitors as an example. Employment and training of more employees will reduce congestion and reduce successive delay – a very simple solution He called many people. However, doing this requires a constant effort and a leading leadership to push bureaucratic stalemate.

“You need someone in FAA really concerned with improving the service. This is not easy to do because there is no incentive for someone in the Federal Aviation Administration to take care of this a lot … they don’t get their salaries,” said Tabaruk. “They are not rewarded at all.”

A spokesman for FAA said luck The organization gives priority to safety, which sometimes requires delay. They referred to a table Show the first five reasons for delay – with the “large” weather the biggest cause. They refused to answer questions about the airline filling schedules and incentives to improve the quality of the airport.

For Tabarrok, the airport’s expansion is the long -term solution to reduce successive delay. But the United States did not open a major commercial airport since He said that Denver International in 1995, and the construction of the runway in the current centers was small. passenger passageMeanwhile, it has grown about 50 % since 2000, which means that more travelers are concentrated in the same physical space.

He added that although we have built larger planes to help transport companies move more people, this was also created in new bottlenecks. The largest aircraft takes longer to fly at each turn. They take longer to climb, empty them and move at the gate, so the turbulent disorder continues in the schedule.

“The infrastructure has been fixed at airports, especially a season to a season,” said Tabaruk. “So when you have more demand with fixed infrastructure, there will be more delay.”

“Flash Story”

Moreover, TABARROK argued with large ticket repairs such as building a new airport or runways facing environmental reviews and legal challenges that could last for a decade.

This leaves recruitment as a more realistic solution, but so that it will require changing how to recruit FAA, its licenses and the control units.

“It is a pessimistic story,” said Tabaruk. “We have these two restrictions that do not respond to market pressure from people’s demand for a more reliable travel, and they were for a long time.”

Without these changes, Tabarrok expects that the United States will be imprisoned in a cycle where every thunderstorm or mechanical superior factors are disrupted in every summer of airports and wasted millions of Americans ’lives.

“If you only do some approximate estimates of the value of people’s time, multiplied by the amount of time they spend waiting at airports or waiting for the delay, you can easily get lost billions of dollars every year.” Tabaruk said. “This cost will continue to grow.”