Airline Mitigation of Propagated Delays: Theory and Empirics on the Choice of Schedule Buffers

This paper presents an extensive theoretical and empirical analysis of the choice of schedule buffers by airlines. With airline delays a continuing problem around the world, such an under-taking is valuable, and its lessons extend to other passenger transportation sectors. One useful lesson from the theoretical analysis of a two-flight model is that the mitigation of delay prop-agation is done entirely by the ground buffer and the second flight’s buffer. The first flight’s buffer plays no role because the ground buffer is a perfect, while nondistorting, substitute. In addition, the apportionment of mitigation responsibility between the ground buffer and the flight buffer of flight 2 is shown to depend on the relationship between the costs of ground-and flight-buffer time. The empirical results show the connection between buffer magnitudes and a host of explanatory variables, including the variability of flight times, which simulations of the model identify as an important determining factor.