I had spare time at breakfast today (Monday August 24), so I decided to randomly check flight arrivals at two of Europe’s major airports: London Heathrow and Frankfurt.
What surprised me was that almost every short-haul flight was landing 20 or 30 minutes ahead of schedule at either hub, during what would usually be a busy time of day.
But in the case of Frankfurt one Ryanair flight from Dublin landed almost 40 minutes early. In fact the only arrivals at Frankfurt without schedule padding were the ICEs using the mainline rail station.
Long-haul examples were not so extreme but in the case of Heathrow I discovered American Airlines’ Miami flight had touched down almost one hour ahead of schedule.
Over the years we at Business Traveller have written numerous articles about schedule ‘padding.’
It’s a practice whereby airlines massage their punctuality figures.
And it’s developed over the decades as airlines strive to operate punctuality in the face of even increasing congestion both in the air and on the ground.
Fifty years ago BEA (British European Airways) allowed 50 minutes for one of its Trident jet flights to go from Heathrow to Paris Le Bourget.
Today a similar British Airways jet flight to nearby Paris CDG is scheduled to take 80 minutes, although its pre Covid-19 schedule might be even longer.
Here are the flight arrivals I checked today.
At Frankfurt
Flight number / departure point
LH011 Hamburg – scheduled 1040; actual 1024
AZ400 Rome – scheduled 1045; actual 1026
FR380 Dublin – scheduled 1055; actual 1014
At London Heathrow
KL1007 Amsterdam – scheduled 0900; actual 0829
LO281 Warsaw – scheduled 0925; actual 0905
AA038 Miami – scheduled 0925; actual 0830
