What Is Left After a Cancellation

Summary

When a flight is cancelled, another flight on the same route operated later that day 55.3% of the time. For the other 44.7% nothing was left: 30.7% were the last flight scheduled on their route that day, and for 13.9% every flight scheduled after them was cancelled or diverted as well. The next flight on the route that did operate left a median 6.4 hours after the cancelled one, and 12.2 hours after it on the same airline. Busy routes and thin ones cancel at about the same rate, so the difference is in what is behind the cancellation: 77.4% of cancelled flights had another to leave later that day on routes with 10 or more flights that day, 28.6% on routes with 2 flights.

A cancelled flight is one the Department of Transportation lists as cancelled. For each of the 327,907 in the data, this report looks at the other flights on the same route, meaning the same origin and destination airports, on the same scheduled date. One route on one date is a route-day. Another flight counts as something left when it was scheduled to depart after the cancelled one, by the same airline or a different one, and it operated: it was neither cancelled nor diverted. The wait is the gap between the two scheduled departures. Where nothing was left that day the search runs on for 48 hours. The data does not say when a cancellation was announced. A flight cancelled a week ahead gave its passengers a week to rebook, and the figures here describe what the schedule still held on the day, which is what a passenger cancelled at the last minute faces.

Flights are counted on the route by origin and destination airport, so a flight to a nearby airport is not an alternative here. The same airline means the same operating carrier as the DOT records it: an airline and the regional carrier that flies for it are two carriers in this table. Median waits are in the text and the tables that follow.

Cancellations are spread almost evenly over busy and thin routes. On days when a route was scheduled for a single flight, 1.31% of them were cancelled; on days when it was scheduled for 10 or more flights, 1.54%. What differs is what stands behind the cancelled flight. On a route with a single flight that day nothing could, and that was the position of 6.8% of all cancelled flights. When the route had 10 or more flights that day, 77.4% of cancelled flights had another to operate later, and the median wait for the next one was 92 minutes. When it had 2 flights, the share was 28.6% and the median wait 15.8 hours. The share with something left rises at every step from the thinnest routes to the busiest.

Groups are the number of flights scheduled on one route on one date, all airlines together. The cancellation rate is cancelled flights over scheduled flights in those route-days. A group is shown when it holds at least 120 cancelled flights. A route with one flight that day has nothing left by definition, and a wait of 24 hours is the same flight the next day.

A cancelled flight early in the day has the rest of the day behind it. 83.4% of cancelled flights scheduled 5–9 AM had another flight on the route later that day; 11.4% of those scheduled 9 PM–12 AM did. From 5 AM the share falls at every step through the day. Cancellations are not confined to the mornings: 31.1% of cancelled flights were scheduled for 6 PM or later, when routes flown a few times a day have run out of flights. The grid below sets frequency and hour together. On a route with 3 to 5 flights that day, a cancelled flight scheduled 5–9 AM had another later 86.4% of the time and one scheduled 6–9 PM 10.1%.

Each figure is the share of cancelled flights, in that group, that had another flight operate on the same route later the same day. A dash marks a group of fewer than 120 cancelled flights.

Cancellations on a route are not independent of each other. 38.2% of cancelled flights were on a route-day when half or more of the route’s flights were cancelled, and 15.4% on one when every flight on the route was. The alternative is thinnest exactly then. Where fewer than a quarter of the route’s flights were cancelled, 81.3% of cancelled flights had another to operate later and the median wait was 103 minutes. Where half or more were, the share was 45.4% and the median wait 11.4 hours. Where every flight was cancelled nothing was left that day by definition, and the median wait for the next flight on the route was 24 hours.

Ordered from a route losing a small part of its day to losing all of it.

By operating carrier, the share of cancelled flights with another flight on the route later that day runs from 6.9% for Allegiant Air to 87.8% for Hawaiian Airlines. The order follows how many flights a carrier’s routes have in a day: across the 15 carriers, the share with something left and the typical number of flights on the route of a cancelled flight move together (correlation 0.83). A carrier whose routes are flown a few times a day leaves its passengers less, and one whose routes are flown often leaves them more, whatever its cancellation rate. The same-airline columns understate what a mainline airline’s passengers can be moved to, because its regional partners are separate carriers in the DOT data.

Ordered by the share with another flight later that day. Shown for carriers with at least 120 cancelled flights. The typical number is the middle value across the carrier’s cancelled flights.

Ranked by the share of cancelled departures with another flight later that day on the same route, MYR (Myrtle Beach) is lowest at 30.8% and LAX (Los Angeles) highest at 79.1%. The route of a typical cancelled flight had 3 flights that day at the 5 airports with the least left behind and 12 at the 5 with the most (medians of each airport’s typical figure). The table describes the schedule at each airport, not how well the airport or its airlines handle a cancellation.

Covered airports with at least 500 cancelled departures, 61 of 64. Ordered from the least left behind to the most.

A flight left on the route is a flight that operated, not a seat. The data has no bookings, so it cannot say whether the next flight had room, whether the airline would move a passenger onto another airline, or whether a passenger would accept a flight to a nearby airport or a connection in place of one on the route. It also cannot say when a cancellation was announced. The wait is measured between scheduled departures, and a flight that leaves late leaves later than the wait says. Weather and air traffic restrictions that cancel one flight often cancel several, as the section on a bad day shows, so the figures for a typical cancellation are more hopeful than those for a widespread one. The airline comparison follows the DOT’s operating carrier, not the brand on the ticket.