Airport dominance, route network design and flight delays

Airlines with a dominant position at the destination airports have little competitive pressure to reduce delays, but they might care about the negative effects that delays generate on their own flights. Using detailed daily flight data for six Spanish airports in 2017–2018 including very precise information on the external factors that generate flight delays, we find that flights operated by network airlines (i.e., airlines that operate a hub-and-spoke network) with a large presence at the destination airports have less delays than flights operated by other airlines. This finding is in line with the literature on congestion internalization, which predicts a negative relationship between airlines’ dominance at the destination airports and delays. We also show that flights operated by low-cost airlines (i.e. airlines that operate a point-to-point network) with a dominant presence at destination airports are more likely to exhibit delays. This result could be explained by the route configuration of low-cost airlines and by their relative low number of connecting passengers.