Econometric analysis of US airline flight delays with time-of-day effects

An econometric model of average daily delay is formulated and estimated to analyze flight delay in the U.S. domestic system. The model considers the effects of arrival queuing, volume, terminal weather, en route weather, seasonal effects, and secular effects. In particular, the time-of-day effects of arrival queuing, the effects of scheduled arrivals, and the interaction between scheduled arrivals and weather conditions are investigated. The estimation results suggest that (a) queuing has a greater delay impact in the morning than in the afternoon or evening (one unit of morning queuing delay causes about three times as much average daily delay as one unit of evening queuing delay), (b) scheduled arrivals-both alone and in interaction with weather conditions-significantly affect average delay, and (c) 31% of the total delay increase between early 2004 and early 2005 can be attributed to traffic growth.