24/7 Wall Street recently published an article highlighting the cost of canceling a flight – both due to the uncontrollable factors, such as weather, or controllable factors, such as scheduling of the crew.
We’ve seen a lot of cancellations recently – mostly due to the mess in Chicago a few weeks ago.
There are some interesting data points worth sharing, which I’ve compiled here:
- It costs an airline an average of $5,770 per flight segment for a cancellation.
- With over 9,000 canceled flight segments in the past 30 days, airlines have lost 52 million dollars.
- For an event the airline should have been able to control, a wide-body 777, 747 or A340 could cost as much as $43,000 for a canceled flight.
- For an event like weather, a wide-body 777, 747 or A340 could cost the airline $13,000 for a canceled flight.
- For a controllable event, a regional jet costs the airline $2,750 for a canceled flight, vs. about $1,000 for an uncontrollable event.
- Regional jets canceled 2.6% of their scheduled flights, compared to just 1% of both narrow body (737s, etc.) and wide-bodied (777, etc.) aircraft.
- For uncontrollable flight delays (weather, etc.), regional jets account for 69% of cancelled flights, narrow body jets cancel 58% and wide-body jets canceled 42.8%.
Of course, the more First and Business Class customers there are on a flight, the more it costs the airline to try and re-book them, thus taking up other valuable seats. While airlines do save costs on canceled flights since they don’t have to provide food and fuel, those costs are taken into account with the losses, and the airline, as a whole, will always loose more on a canceled flight than gain.
It’s some interesting data points, for sure, and provides a unique insight into the daily operations of the major carriers.
Jamie Larounis is an avid traveler, blogger and miles/points educator. Traveling well over 100,000 miles a year and staying in hotels for over 100 nights, he leverages miles, points and other deals to fly in first class cabins, and stay in 5-star hotels. The Forward Cabin shares his experiences, musings, reviews, tips, tricks, resources and industry news with you, the fellow traveler.
Back in 2010, I took the LGA-ORD shuttle flight on Delta. They had flights scheduled to go every hour, but on the one I was booked on, there were fewer than 10 passengers booked.
Delta canceled the flight (claimed ‘weather issues’ even though it was sunny in both cities) and rebooked us for a later flight. In that case, they probably did save money by doing that.
If they manage to Rebook everyone on the same airline or alliance i would assume there would be almost no loss
It probably wouldn’t be a no loss situation if they manage to rebook everyone on the same airline. There’s an opportunity cost if they rebook people on other flights because those seats could have been sold to other paying passengers. A last minute booker is likely to buy a very high unrestricted fare (like Y fare class), which is several times the price of a discounted Economy ticket.
If they did it without preventing the sale of those later seats, they would save money by not using fuel.
“narrow body jets cancel 582%” missing decimal or did the airlines figure out how to manipulate math to their whims to further screw over their customers? My guess is on the airlines.
In the EU it can cost airlines even more! EU legislation entitles passengers to compensation of up to 600€ for cancelled or delayed flights over 3 hours, if the cause is not an “extraordinary circumstance”, so on a flight with say 250 passengers it could cost them €150,000.
Luckily for the airlines, only about 2% of people successfully pursue their compensation in these cases.