While the Transportation Department’s new tarmac-delay rule has significantly curtailed the number of delays, the new DOT measure has caused thousands of additional canceled flights through the summer months, says a report released last week by economics website the Airline Zone and consultancy Marks Aviation.
The report acknowledges the rule, which became effective April 29, prevented 534 fewer lengthy onboard delays between May 1 and Sept. 30. As a result, the report said, about 59,500 fewer passengers experienced the long delays during those months compared with the year before.
"However,"during the same period, systemwide cancellations at the 19 largest U.S. carriers increased by 5,064 flights (18%), impacting 384,000 incremental passengers at those 19 airlines," the report said.
That increase came, the report said, even though weather was much more favorable during the summer months. The better weather should have decreased the number of cancellations, according to the report.
The DOT said the data are open to interpretation.
"According to the same airline consultants’ report, 4,793 of the 5,068 additional flight cancellations occurred before the plane even left the gate and, therefore, have nothing to do with limits on tarmac delays," DOT spokesman Bill Mosley said.
"If you look at the number of flights canceled after tarmac delays of more than two hours, the instances in which planes may have returned to the gate to comply with the tarmac delay rule, the numbers are about the same in 2009 and 2010," Mosley said.
In 2009 for the months covered by the analysts’ report, he said, 220 flights were canceled after delays of two hours or more, compared with 225 flights in 2010.
"Since DOT’s passenger protections went into effect, tarmac delays have dropped to almost zero and, as our airline data show, have not caused any tangible increase in flight cancellations," Mosley said.
The agency had predicted there would be 41 additional cancellations per year due to the new rule.
Darryl Jenkins, founder of the Airline Zone, contends the cancellations before the plane left the gate were due to the new rule.
The airlines are now canceling flights at the first hint of bad weather or other problems because of the rule, he said, rather than face the large fines.
Airlines can be fined as much as $27,500 per passenger on each flight that has a tarmac delay of three hours where passengers were not given a chance to deplane.
Some airlines warned early on that the DOT provision would force them to cancel more flights.
"What we have said and continue to say is that the tarmac delay rule has unintended consequences associated with it," said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association. "But the rule is the rule, and we remain in full compliance."
The DOT has maintained that there has been no substantial cancellation increase in the overall monthly cancellation rate.
But Jenkins said the rates should have gone down significantly because data from the FAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Commerce Department show that, on average, weather conditions were 30% more favorable than in the same period of 2009.
With weather like that, he said, the rates should have fallen.
Jenkins said the DOT should consider tarmac-delay-rule refinements, such as graduating the fines, collecting specific tarmac-related data, deferring the implementation of the rule to international flights for small airports until the cancellations drop, increasing the time limit to four hours and improving real-time information exchange between the tower and airlines during tarmac delay conditions.
This report appeared in the Nov. 21 issue of Travel Weekly.