Flight Cancellation Behavior and Delay Savings

In this paper, we investigate the relationship between flight cancellations and delays. First, we investigate the factors influencing flight cancellations using a binary choice model. We focus on characteristics of the routes, airports, aircraft, passenger traffic, and delays for one month of domestic US flights. The cancellation probability predictions from the model estimates are then applied to deterministic queuing models from flight schedule data to estimate the expected reduction in delays due to flight cancellations. Monte Carlo simulation techniques are compared with a simplified simulation algorithm and continuous approximations.