Air travel is becoming an unpredictable endeavor this summer: how much time do I have to plan for baggage drop-off at check-in, how many hours for the queue at security control? These two questions concern many holidaymakers.
In order to master the difficulties of passenger handling on the ground, several airlines have cut their flight schedules and rebooked their passengers. Lufthansa has now confronted customers with three waves of flight cancellations. Thousands of passengers are affected during the peak travel season. London Heathrow Airport has even called on the airlines to stop selling plane tickets and to limit the number of passengers in the terminals to 100,000 a day.
The Canadian company Hopper, which specializes in data analysis for travel, analyzed air traffic at European airports, among other things. Over a ten-day period, from July 1st to July 10th, actual arrival and departure times were compared to those of scheduled flights, with surprising results.
Hopper relies on the reliable Official Airline Guide (OAG) as the data source. Their employees and computers monitor millions of flights carried out worldwide. In their research, a flight is considered on-time if the difference between a scheduled take-off or landing and the actual time it departs or arrives at the gate is no more than 15 minutes.
In the Hopper evaluation, the hubs of two airlines under the umbrella of the Lufthansa Group performed worst. The irony of it all: the Lufthansa Innovation Hub entered into a research alliance with Hopper shortly before the pandemic.
Sources: https://media.hopper.com and www.lufthansagroup.com
Also read:
– In July and August: Lufthansa cancels another 2000 flights
– Verdi on the airport chaos: “The system is pretty ramshackle”
– Airport chaos: Which countries have made provisions for the summer – and which have not