Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
I'm curious how the rule counts cancellations in order for an airline to achieve the 10% reduction number. Obviously airlines are more likely to cancel RJ flights or flights between a hub and a small spoke outstation. However, such flights generally only touch one airport on the list of 40, while by definition hub-to-hub or more generally 40airport-to-40airport flights hit one of the 40 in both directions, so that would use twice as much scarce ATC resources.
Similarly one could argue that a go around consumes more ATC resources that a landing. Needed go arounds won't be avoided, but an airline might proactively cancel flights that are more likely to experience a go around due to very strong winds, etc.
Without veering too off topic... there are reasons to be suspect about the methodology being applied here to relieve ATC constraints.
It is true that yes, less air traffic overall is going to keep more slack in the system for when staffing constraints happen. But staffing constraints are going to occur either at specific airports or covering specific ARTCC (e.g. the infamous ZJX which has had issues for a long time, even before the shutdown). So this entire exercise will not actually stop day-of disruptions from occurring.
Further - and admittedly I haven't looked at detail of the time profile of the cancelled flights - airlines, if given full discretion - will prioritize cutting flights during lower yield hours impacted by the cuts (very early morning, late morning, early afternoon) while keeping the high yield times - mid-morning and late afternoon/early evening. So, as you alluded to, airlines will prioritize cuts to RJs where only one "high volume airport" is impacted instead of two and likely still keep peak throughput the same in the mid-morning and late afternoon/early evening departure slots.
In other words - it is unclear to me that, other than potentially more slack to allow for recovery after a staffing shortage, that this 10% across the board cut - as implemented - will actually alleviate the underlying problem.
It is possible that the DOT/FAA guidance was more specific to the airlines. But at least with what has been publicly disclosed, this entire thing has me scratching my head. ATC needs relief, and perhaps this is one way to do it, but it doesn't seem like it will actually solve the problem it is supposedly trying to get ahead of. I'll leave it to the reader to determine why they may be choosing to go down this path despite not addressing the core constraints.
I'll look through the Delta and other airline cancellations tomorrow in more detail to see if we can deduce more specific guidance that may not be publicly disclosed in terms of how airlines may have been instructed to manage the cancellations... if we understand the "rules", people may be able to better predict the risk of cancellation of their flight (if there are no rules, high demand flight times will be safe.. if there are additional unpublished rules, that may not be the case).