Analysis of the potential for delay propagation in passenger airline networks

The paper analyzes the potential for delays to propagate in passenger airline networks. The aim is to better understand the relationship between the scheduling of aircraft and crew, and the operational performance of such schedules. In particular, when carriers decide how to schedule costly resources, the focus is primarily on achieving high levels of utilization. The resulting plans, however, often have little slack, limiting the schedule's ability to absorb disruption; instead, initial flight delays may propagate to delay subsequent flights as well. Understanding the relationship between planned schedules and delay propagation is a requisite precursor to developing tools for building more robust airline plans. This relationship is investigated using the flight data provided by two major US carriers, one traditional hub-and-spoke and one low-fare carrier operating a predominantly point-to-point network.