Picking a plane that will arrive on time

You have a better chance of your plane arriving on time if you follow some simple rules of thumb in choosing your flight.

– Choose a 737 over a 757.
– Avoid planes with fancy lie-flat seats that are often the cause of delays.
– Choose a large carrier.
– Choose younger planes over older planes.

According to a recent analysis by The Wall Street Journal, it is possible to avoid some delays by picking a particular type of aircraft and carrier for the flight. United’s 737s, for example, arrived on time 82 percent of the time versus only 70 percent with their 757s.
Bigger carriers avoid delays by having additional planes waiting in reserve that are in the same family as the originals. Carriers routinely swap planes out when there are problems or delays. These swaps are quite easy if the aircraft are the same because the seating arrangements and flight crews will be the same as well.

Having many different kinds of planes on a route reduces the amount of flexibility carriers have with those swaps and leads to more cancellations and delays.

When it comes to individual plane reliability, a carrier’s maintenance protocol can dramatically affect the amount of downtime it will experience. Case in point; a comparison of on-time arrival rate between the same aircraft from Delta and American showed that the former boasted 82.8 percent versus 69.1 percent for the latter. The reason for this considerable difference revolves around how Delta uses data to predict which parts are likely to break in the future but also actively redesign parts and proactively replace them ahead of recommendations. They also use traveling maintenance bases to go to where the aircraft sit overnight rather than wasting flight time by bringing them into headquarters.