How are airline flight schedules negotiated and determined?

The biggest thing about it from a controller’s point of view is this: ATC doesn’t “negotiate” schedules at all. Before deregulation of the aviation industry, flight times were far more controlled, but these days it’s pretty much up to the airlines and the individual airport to schedule things.

And like Jim said, essentially no US airport bothers to constrain capacity (through flight arrival scheduling) when demand exceeds supply. Instead, the airports just figure ATC will work it out.

There are a very few instances of the FAA/ATC getting involved and limiting arrivals at an airport; one of the best-known would be at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport through the mid 2000’s.

But the reality is that for the most part, it’s just up to the airlines.

And it’s a classic case of a situation called “Tragedy of the commons“. Basically, this economic theory says that if you have a resource that’s shared among several users, then each individual user will act in their own self-interest, even though if all of them do the same thing it might degrade the resource overall.

The classic example of this is a village commons where people might keep their sheep. Say there’s ten families with ten sheep each, for a total of 100 sheep. The village commons (a big field where the sheep live) can only support 100 sheep; more than that and the quality of the field starts to degrade, with the grass getting trampled, too much sheep poop, etc.

But one family says “hey, if we add two more sheep, our income will go up 20%!” So they do.

Now, the impact on the commons overall is only a 2% addition, so it doesn’t really go downhill badly. There’s still *almost* enough grass for all the sheep, and the overall quality of the entire flock only goes down a tiny little bit for each individual sheep, even including the family who added the extras.

But the problem is that each family is now going to do the same thing. Why not? Any one extra sheep they add might only degrade the field a little bit (including their own flock) but they see their own income go up a lot.

And so the commons gets worse, and worse, and then when each family sees their wool yield from their sheep go downhill a little bit, they have more pressure to add another sheep or two, until eventually you wind up with a field with very little grass and a lot of sheep poop where everyone’s cranky and angry and yelling at the stupid gate agent who is telling you that your next flight is cancelled.

Um, or something like that.

Point being, that’s how many airports operate. The individual airline adds another flight, even though the airport really can’t handle it, because to the airline it represents a significant increase in revenue. But the overall effect of all the airlines adding too many flights means that the airport, during those peak hours when everyone wants to travel, winds up full of sheep poop. Or delays, anyway.

You might think “well, the airport should step in!” but for each individual flight that is added, the airport gets added revenues in landing fees- so even the “commons” in this case has an incentive to overschedule.

And if the FAA tries to say “look, there’s too much sheep poo- sorry, too many flights here”, the airlines all get upset and fight and put political pressure on the agency, because they don’t want THEIR flights to be the ones that are cancelled to ensure that the airport isn’t overscheduled.

This has turned into a longer answer than I intended but I hope it makes sense.

One final thought: You might think “well, airlines should be smart and band together and agree to not overschedule, so they can all run smoothly and make money”, right?

But consider this: Overall, over the past several decades, airlines have (in total) managed to make around a 1 to 2 % profit margin (http://www.avjobs.com/history/ai… orhttp://people.hofstra.edu/geotra… or at best. Many pundits have written (based on some serious economic studies) that the overall airline industry has basically been a break-even proposition if you look at the entire history.

And just a few days ago, the international airline trade group said that airlines are making about $4 per passenger in profit. FOUR DOLLARS. (Airline Profits Forecast to Rise)

The most damning chart is probably the second one on this page: Airline profitability: airlines can no longer afford to be the poor relations of aviation

Compare how much profit airlines make to what other industries manage, and you can figure out pretty quickly that getting into the airline business is NOT a smart choice.

Here’s a some answers of some question about airline flight schedules.

Q: Do the airlines buy big time blocks per gate at an airport?
A: No. They go even farther. Usually, an airline will sign a long-term lease for exclusive use of a group of contiguous gates in an airport terminal. This allows the airline to operate out of the XYZAirline Terminal, and to maximize its network connections for hub-and-spoke control of its passenger traffic. A smaller airline or an airline with few flights will sign a contract with the airport for the use of a gate or gates that may be available at the time the airline needs gate space. The airline will have similar arrangements with the airport for counter space in the ticketing hall. Then the airline can use the airport facilities for whatever schedule the airline chooses. (Sometimes, the airport has insufficient gates/counters, and has to ration them or turn the airline down.)

Q: Do the airlines give themselves buffer for flexibility in rescheduling?
A: Yes. The airlines want maximum flexibility to change their schedules, bearing in mind that doing so can reduce their penetration/development/share of the passenger market.

Q: How far in advance are schedules negotiated?
A: Five minutes. Five months. With whom? Ideally, the airline identifies an unserved market and announces its new schedule with a few days’ lead time for advertising to passengers who will immediately cancel other flights/tickets to travel on the new, more convenient, non-stop scheduled service. By springing the new schedule on the unsuspecting world, the airline avoids competition by other airlines.

Q: (The bottom line, which I have moved from first to the end.) I want to know how the airlines, airports, and air traffic control come together to come up with flight schedules.
A: Airports are whores. They’ll lease all their gates and build new ones for any airline that will pay for them.
Air traffic control will let the airlines use all available runway and airspace capacity, first-come = first-served. When runway takeoff capacity is 100% used, the airport and airlines will reluctantly fight it out to see who can avoid taking responsibility for fairly allocating the scarce resource.
When runway landing capacity is 100% used, the ATC system usually gets involved, using flight plan times and takeoff times to manage the arrivals. Some flights may be refused takeoff clearance because the airways, approaches and runways are chockablock at the destination. When flights are delayed, the airline looks bad, and consumers vote with their feet.
When the airways are congested and the destination airport is approaching full capacity usage, ATC will sometimes reroute flights to lengthen their routes and add time to their flights, causing late arrivals. Late arrivals make the airline look bad …
When a high-demand airport’s location, (e.g. at London) combines with a pattern of departure limitations at other airports (e.g., on the US East Coast), creating an arriving traffic peak of international flights, the airlines will run to their national government to complain that their routes and rights under the bilateral air transport treaties are being unfairly restricted and the home carriers are unfairly benefiting from better access. This brings the diplomats and civil aviation authorities into meetings and negotiations that try (with no real leverage) to get the airlines, airports and air traffic control authorities to smooth out the problems and allocate the scarce access.

You didn’t ask about the one party who exercises absolute control of airline flight schedules: The customs/immigration inspection services allow international arriving flights on scheduled airlines ONLY at pre-approved times, and charter flights ONLY at pre-approved times when they fit between the arrivals of the scheduled airlines. This is mainly due to staffing needs for clearing the arriving passengers (and the digestive comfort of the inspectors’ labor union representatives.)