Policies and Industry Trends and Their Impacts on Passenger Delay

The aim of this project is to understand and evaluate how policies and trends in the airline industry impact passenger delays in the US National Aviation System. In particular, we are investigating the three-hour tarmac delay rule, which came into effect in April 2010, as an effort to curb lengthy delays during the taxi-out and taxi-in phases. To study this, we are testing a range of assumptions on cancellation decisions by airlines, and passenger re-booking times, and utilizing the Passenger Delay Calculator, also developed at MIT. As of now, we have obtained passenger delay results for several days in 2007 assuming hypothetical scenarios where the tarmac delays rule existed for those days.