Using a generalized model for air traffic delay: An application of information based duration analysis

Airlines air traffic delays cause discomfort to passengers and cost airlines dearly, thus there is no wonder that a growing number of authors from different disciplines have studied air traffic delays and their patterns. This paper departs from existing literature by assuming air traffic delay to be a duration variable whose true distribution is unknown. It suggests a general model that includes several other models as subfamilies and utilizes an information contents based approach to find the most appropriate model to study air traffic delays. The results for two different airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines, reveal that airlines of comparable size and market influence air traffic delays could follow different patterns.