The Impact of Operational Flight Predictability on Airline Fuel Cost

The concept of predictability in air transportation has received increased attention in recent service quality assessments. Among various benefits that could be achieved through improved flight predictability, in this paper the authors investigate the benefit of reduced fuel cost. The unpredictability under flight performance may cause airline dispatchers to load more fuel onto aircraft, and thus causing extra fuel consumed to carry this excessive fuel. In this study, the authors have a large and recent dataset with flight-level fuel loading and consumption information from a major United States airline. With this data, firstly the relationship between the amount of loaded fuel and flight predictability performance is estimated using statistical model. Then the impact on loaded fuel is translated into fuel consumption and ultimately, fuel cost for US domestic operations. The authors find that one minute of standard deviation, capturing flight unpredictability, in airborne time within a month for the same OD pair and shift of day would lead to 0.95 minute increase in loaded contingency fuel and 1.85 loaded contingency and alternate fuel. If there is no unpredictability in the aviation system, the reduction in the loaded fuel would be 6.4 and 12.5 minute per flight, respectively. This ultimately translates into a cost to US domestic airlines on the order of $88 - $345 million per year.