{"id":3111,"date":"2023-07-31T06:06:29","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T06:06:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vayuacademy.com\/blog\/?p=3111"},"modified":"2023-07-31T06:06:31","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T06:06:31","slug":"flight-cancellation-reasons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vayuacademy.com\/blog\/flight-cancellation-reasons\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Flight Cancellations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Flight delay is one of the primary performance metrics used in the aviation industry to gauge the performance of various players like airline, airport and air traffic control services. Due to the scheduled nature of air transportation, small delays in the system can propagate to not only subsequent flights but also to flights with connecting passengers thus affecting many other\u00a0flights of the network. This results in large delays for many passengers. Flight delays are a function of several factors and you can read my previous article<\/a> to better understand them. One factor that greatly\u2002affects\u00a0flight delays but is not entirely understood is\u00a0flight cancellations. In this blog I will focus on reasons for cancellation of flights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The airlines like to keep the aircraft on ground for minimum time to maximise their revenues. But cancellations do happen. As such flight cancellations are low probability events, and are inherently difficult to predict. However, when\u00a0flight cancellations do occur, the impact is substantial. The passengers on the cancelled\u00a0flight must be rebooked on other\u00a0flights, often hours later. Flight cancellations is a major source of delay and inconvenience to passengers. Though cancellation make up a very small (1.5 to 2) percentage of flight operations but is major source of passenger delay. Flight cancellations are much more onerous for passengers than\u00a0flight delays for a number of reasons. First, rebooking the passengers requires finding empty seats on already crowded planes and can result in many hours or even days of delays for the passengers, particularly if the passengers have connecting\u00a0flights. Second,\u00a0flight operations are severely impacted because airlines typically use the same aircraft for several\u00a0flight segments in a row. A\u00a0flight cancellation will thus have an impact on downline segments ranging from a new aircraft assignment to additional cancellations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exact factors that go into which\u00a0flights are cancelled are not very well understood and likely vary across airlines. To better be able to predict\u00a0 the probability of your flight getting cancelled let us first understand the factors leading to flight cancellations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n