Ryanair punctuality; mistakes in academic papers
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is the short edition of More or Less, first broadcast on the BBC World Service.
Hello and welcome to More or Less on the BBC World Service. I'm Tim Harford. This week we test the veracity of this claim.
Welcome. You've arrived in yet another on-time flight. Last year over 90% of Ryanair flights landed on time, beating every other European airline.
Anyone who flies on Ryanair, a near-ubiquitous no-frills airline operating all over Europe, will have heard this claim because they've been repeating it for years. Charlotte McDonald's here. Charlotte, it seems a bit odd that Ryanair keep using this statistic.
And surely it's only a matter of time before they start charging us for listening to it. Now, we only have Ryanair's word that this claim is true. The UK's Civil Aviation Authority collects data on flights arriving and departing from 10 UK airports. Based on that data, a website called flightontime.info worked out that Ryanair is falling some way short of 90%, with only 83% of flights arriving on time. Nor is Ryanair the most punctual airline operating out of those airports.
Well, caught red-handed then.
How reliable is Ryanair's claim that over 90% of its flights land on time?
It's hard to be sure of that. This is just data from 10 UK airports. There are lots of airports in Europe. It could be that Ryanair's average is much better when you take them into account. And is it? I just don't know. Ryanair refused to give me a breakdown of their figures. But Jim Payton, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Air Transport at Cranfield University in the UK, agrees Ryanair's average could be being brought up by other routes.
A big proportion of their network in Europe is operations to small airports and airfields that don't suffer from air traffic congestion, such as would be the case around London, for instance, or Paris.
Right. So Ryanair are arriving on time 90% of the time, according to super secret proprietary data held by Ryanair. What about the claim that they beat every other airline?
Now, Ryanair's press office says they're comparing their figures to the most recent Association of European Airlines statistics. But that organisation hasn't published any new figures since 2009. And more to the point, that organisation has only 32 members. Over 200 airlines in Europe aren't members, including Ryanair itself. So I don't think that data really backs up their boast.
Now, we were alerted to Ryanair's proud announcement by Fiona, a loyal More or Less listener from Edinburgh in Scotland, who emailed us at moreorless at bbc.co.uk. She's also wondering how one would objectively measure being on time.
I do wonder if they've simply designated such long flight times that it would be practically impossible for them to be late.
Now, there is a term for this in the industry. It's called schedule padding. And it's been alleged not only in Europe, but in the United States as well. If you push back your scheduled arrival time, leaving extra time for the flight, you can still say you're on time. I asked Ryanair if it does this. It said no. And in this case, I'm going to defend them. I had a quick look at Fiona's home airport of Edinburgh to see how Ryanair flight times measured up to its rivals. I found eight routes where competitors were making the same journey.
What does UK Civil Aviation Authority data say about Ryanair punctuality versus other airlines?
And in only one case did Ryanair give a longer flight time than its rivals.
OK, that could just mean, though, that all the airlines are exaggerating their flight times.
Well, that may be true, Tim. And just to put this into perspective, today, British Airways reports a flight time of 75 minutes from London to Amsterdam. In 1958, when it was using planes with propellers, it was taking 70 minutes to do the same journey. And Jim Payton told me that schedule padding is common for a number of reasons. including the fact that customers feel cheerful when the pilots tell them that despite a late departure, they're going to make up some time.
Thank you, Charlotte. Earlier in the series, we brought you the story of a highly influential economics paper written by two Harvard professors, which had helped shape the debate on austerity in America and Europe, and the story of the graduate student who'd spotted some problems with it.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–1:06
2
How reliable is Ryanair's claim that over 90% of its flights land on time?
1:06–3:10
3
What does UK Civil Aviation Authority data say about Ryanair punctuality versus other airlines?
3:10–6:45
4
How do route types and small airports affect Ryanair’s overall punctuality figures?
6:45–9:04