Patrick Smith, a pilot, flags the above chart — which has been floating around the Internet today — as a means to illustrate his point that flying is actually, on balance, a much better experience now than it was in the past:
Whenever I take the time to remind people of just how inexpensive flying has become, my inbox gets socked with hate mail. People simply hate flying, and the level of anti-airline contempt is so high that it has become almost impossible to say anything positive about the experience without being called a shill, a lackey, or worse.
It’s only in the past 30 years or so that flying as we know it — as an affordable form of mass transit — has come to exist.
I’ll remind you too that roughly 83 percent of flights arrive on time.
However, this last sentence is not entirely accurate. As the Times of India and others have reported, airlines routinely engage in “schedule padding:”
Industry insiders are aware that airlines often fudge flight block timings to show a good on-time performance record. This is why the journey time on tickets varies even if the sector (Mumbai-Jaipur, for instance) is the same. For instance, the actual flying time-or block time-from Mumbai to Jaipur is an hour and 30 minutes. However, one airline may give the block time as an hour and 35 minutes, while another may have a more inflated schedule of an hour and 50 minutes.
“Airlines do this to create a buffer for delays. So, even if they are delayed, a higher block time on paper gives them room to land a bit late and still be on time,” an airport official said. “However, most of them arrive early and ask for landing when other scheduled flights are already waiting,” he added.
The result (at least in this case)?
Early arrival of flights at Mumbai is causing massive congestion. What’s equally worrying is that though the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has issued a standardised block time for all flights, airlines continue to manipulate timings to maintain an untainted on-time performance record.
Data submitted to the civil aviation ministry shows that in October [2011], 1,435 flights arrived more than 15 minutes before the scheduled time. In November [2011], 1,239 flights arrived early.
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