While searching for a flight between two cities, airlines and OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) give options to sort the flights by departure time or duration. While the duration aspect might sound nice for a one-stop flight, it should ideally not make a difference for a non-stop flight. This is actually wrong!
While a 5-10 minute difference is normal due to various reasons, a look at the flight schedules shared by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, show a variation which can span from anywhere between 10 and 55 minutes depending on the sector.
Take Mumbai-Delhi, for example. The shortest flight between the busiest sectors in the country is an IndiGo flight, which is scheduled to take an hour and fifty-five minutes. The longest is a tie between six Air India flights and one SpiceJet flight, which have a scheduled block time of two hours and thirty minutes.
On the Delhi-Mumbai sector, while the shortest flight continues to be at one hour and fifty-five minutes, the longest duration flight is even longer, with an Air India flight taking two hours and fifty minutes, nearly an hour longer than the shortest flight on the sector. Interestingly, this Air India flight is scheduled to operate with the widebody B777-300ER aircraft, with a maximum speed higher than the narrowbody aircraft. Air India’s average flight time between Delhi and Mumbai is 143 minutes or two hours and twenty-three minutes, while IndiGo’s average stands at two hours and eighteen minutes.
On Delhi-Bengaluru, the second busiest sector in India and longer than Delhi-Mumbai, the shortest flights are operated by Air India at two hours and forty minutes, while the longest flights are operated by SpiceJet at three hours and ten minutes. On the Bengaluru-Delhi sector, the shortest flights continue to be at two hours and forty minutes, while the longest flights are operated by Akasa Air at three hours and thirty-five minutes. The distance between the two cities is 1,058 miles.
Incidentally, the 1,542-mile-long Delhi-Port Blair non-stop flight takes just five minutes longer, at three hours and forty minutes.
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On Mumbai-Bengaluru, the third busiest route in the country, flights take anywhere between one hour and forty minutes and two hours and fifteen minutes. The variation nearly does not exist on shorter sectors like Bengaluru-Chennai where all the flights take 60-70 minutes, but a look at the Bengaluru-Kochi sector shows flights (of the same type) taking between 60 and 80 minutes as scheduled, a variation of 33% in some cases.
Slots, congestion and more
One of the primary reasons why the block times change is non-availability of slots, where airlines are forced to accept the available slots. The top airports in India are full and there is hardly any leeway to change slots. However, it also has a negative impact since the block times are high but the flight which leaves on time and has a longer block time will end up reaching earlier than planned and clogging the airport’s system, precisely the reason why they weren’t granted the slots.
Impact on On-Time Performance
The varied block times, both undercut as well as buffered, have an impact on the On-Time Performance (OTP) reporting. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation reports its OTP based on the performance at six metro airports only and not the entire country. While this covers over three- fourths of the flights in India, a buffered block time would ensure flights being on time in cases where they depart late but arrive early or on-time.
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There probably is a need to have a more transparent system in place to measure the On-Time Performance and at the same time strive towards having a standardised block time which does not confuse the passengers, many of whom are new or first-timers in India.
