All airlines will occasionally suffer from delayed or cancelled flights. Some disruptions are caused by factors you can influence, such as aircraft maintenance, staffing and flight schedules. Others, such as bad weather, are outside your control.
The Flight Irregularities page helps you monitor your airline’s punctuality, find the causes of disruptions and choose how your airline looks after affected passengers.
Delays and Cancellations
A delayed flight operates later than scheduled. A cancelled flight does not operate, and therefore carries no passengers or cargo and earns no ticket or cargo revenue.
Delays and cancellations affect your airline’s Company Image. Repeated problems can damage your reputation, so keeping your operation reliable is an important part of managing the airline.
The possible causes are:
Aircraft rotation: There is too little turnaround time between flights of the same aircraft. Leaving more time between flights reduces this risk. Using the minimum permitted turnaround time may allow a more intensive schedule, but also makes delays more likely.
Technical problems: Aircraft in poor technical condition are more likely to suffer disruptions. Keep your fleet maintained and investigate aircraft whose condition is falling.
Airport and route traffic restrictions: Congestion and traffic restrictions can delay flights, particularly at busy airports.
Airport weather conditions: Weather can cause delays and cancellations. These disruptions are outside your airline’s control.
Lack of staff: Staff shortages can disrupt your operation. Check the staffing requirements at each base, particularly after expanding your fleet or opening more routes.
Unmotivated staff: Low morale can cause operational problems even when you employ enough people. Check salaries and outstanding pay raise requests.
Aircraft grounded: An aircraft may be grounded because of expired maintenance or, for leased aircraft, because its condition has fallen below the lessor’s requirements.
Staff strike: A strike can cancel flights. Address the affected staff group’s pay demands through the Personnel Office.
Force majeure: Unexpected world events can interrupt operations. These events are outside your airline’s control.
You cannot eliminate every disruption. However, allowing reasonable turnaround times, maintaining your aircraft and looking after your staff will reduce the problems you can influence.
Reading the Statistics
Most statistics can be viewed for the last 7, 14 or 30 game days. The figures cover completed game days and update as the simulation progresses.
Where enough history exists, the page also compares the selected period with the preceding period of the same length. For example, the last seven days are compared with the seven days before them. New airlines may need to operate for longer before these comparisons become available.
The period selectors belong to individual tables or charts, so you can examine different periods in different parts of the page.
Punctuality
The Punctuality tab provides an overview of departure punctuality, average delay and cancellations, together with a daily punctuality chart.
A flight counts as “on time” if it departs no more than 15 minutes late.
A flight departing 16 minutes late is outside this limit, and thus counted as “delayed” in punctuality statistics.
Cancelled flights do not count as on-time departures.
The page uses 85% departure punctuality as its target. This means that at least 85 out of every 100 flights should depart within the 15-minute limit.
Average delay spreads the recorded delay minutes across all flights in the period. It is therefore different from the average delay experienced only by flights which departed late.
Delays
The Delays tab breaks down delays by their cause. Use it to see which problems contribute most to your airline’s total delay minutes.
The cause table and charts help distinguish persistent problems from occasional disruption. For example, aircraft rotation delays may point to schedules with tight turnarounds, while technical delays suggest checking aircraft condition.
Look at both the overall level and the change over time. A short period can be affected by a few unusually bad days, while a longer period gives a broader view of the operation.
Cancellations
The Cancellations tab shows how many flights were cancelled and the reasons for those cancellations.
Cancellations deserve particular attention because they affect Company Image and remove the revenue the flight would otherwise have earned. Check whether they result from a problem you can resolve, such as a grounded aircraft or a staff shortage, or from an outside event.
Remember that there will always be some delays and cancellations. Your task is to keep them at an acceptable level!
Problem Areas
The Problem Areas tab helps you find where to take action:
Least Punctual Routes: Routes with poor recent punctuality, including their main disruption cause and cancellation figures.
Airport Delay Hot Spots: Airports associated with the most recorded delay minutes in your operation.
Tight Turnarounds: Flights whose scheduled ground time creates a risk of delays. Follow the links to review the route and aircraft schedule.
Delays by Aircraft Type: A comparison of recent punctuality across the aircraft types you operate.
Staff Levels: Staffing shortages at your bases which may contribute to operational problems.
Aircraft Condition: Aircraft with lower technical condition which may need attention.
The route, airport and aircraft-type statistics describe recent operations. The turnaround, staff and condition sections describe your current situation. You can therefore use these current checks even before a new airline has accumulated flight history.
Remember that the history will still include earlier disruptions after you fix a problem. Allow some game days for an improvement to become visible in the statistics.
Compensation Policy
The Costs & Policy tab lets you choose how your airline cares for passengers affected by long delays and cancellations. Use these policies to lower the negative effects to your Company Image from flight delays and cancellations.
There are four policies that affect the care and services given to passengers in case of delays or cancellations, and in turn how much they affect your Company Image.
The worst policy does not help the stranded passengers at all in case of problems, and it causes the biggest negative PR effects to your airline. While the most generous option is the most costly for your, but causes the least PR damage.
Note that by choosing a good passenger compensation option, you can most likely reduce your marketing expenses since marketing is used to raise your Company Image.
The chosen policy applies throughout your airline, including all bases and passenger routes. If you make changes to it, the new policy applies from the next game day onwards.
Compensation applies to passenger flights delayed two hours or more, and to cancelled passenger flights. Longer delays generally cost more than shorter delays, while cancellations have the highest cost for an equivalent number of affected passengers.
Passenger care is handled automatically. You do not need to manage individual payments or arrange assistance for each flight.
A more generous policy reduces the Company Image damage associated with compensated disruptions, but does not remove it completely. It also does not change how often flights are delayed or cancelled. Improving the reliability of your operation remains important.
Compensation for a cancelled flight applies even when the cancellation was caused by an event outside your airline’s control.
Customer Services Staff
Your customer services staff help deliver the passenger care promised by your policy.
Staff shortages or low morale in this department reduce how effectively compensation protects Company Image. They do not reduce the compensation expense.
Understanding the Costs
The Costs & Policy tab shows recorded delay compensation, cancellation compensation and the total irregularity costs for the selected period.
When you select a different policy, the page shows an estimate of what that policy would cost for the same recent operation. The estimate is a guide based on recent flight history; it is not a forecast of exactly what your airline will spend.
For delayed flights, compensation is based on the passengers carried. For cancelled flights, the system estimates the affected passengers from recent operations because the flight did not take place.
The table also shows Estimated ticket revenue lost through cancellations. This represents revenue your airline may have earned if those flights had operated. It is already absent from your ticket sales and is not charged again as an expense.
Compensation expenses appear under Irregularity costs in the Income Statement and reduce the reported profit of your operation.