Diversion Ahead: Modeling the Factors Driving Diversion Airport Choice
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 24, Issue 1
Abstract
When airlines and air traffic controllers in the United States decide how to divert flights en route to an airport that is experiencing a complete or partial outage, their decisions determine the resiliency of the aviation network: the speed at which passengers, crew, and the aircraft are recovered. In the following study, the relationship between the choice of diversion airport and the characteristics of an intended destination airport and the individual flights are investigated. Using a binomial logit formulation and data for every diverted domestic flight between 2010 and 2016, it is found that flights are more likely to divert to small airports—those that do not act as airline hubs and carry relatively few passengers and flights—when the intended destination airport of the flight is experiencing a complete or partial outage; the effect is even stronger when the airport experiencing this complete/partial outage is a hub of the airline operating the flight to be diverted. The findings indicate that, when faced with a full or partial airport outage, airlines favor a strategy of diverting flights nearby their intended destination, particularly if the airport experiencing the completely/partial outage is a hub, and waiting until the outage clears, instead of diverting to a distant airport with many flights that would allow passengers to be reaccommodated. While this strategy allows airlines the possibility of recovering their operations (with delay), it may not offer a resilient outcome when airlines are recovering from climate events, which may be long in duration and far-reaching such that proximate diversion airports are affected. As climate events threaten to become more frequent and intense at coastal airports, and the frequency and intensity of events may be more uncertain, airlines should modify their diversion plans and preferences to focus on passenger reaccommodation.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Theo Lim, Chloé Le Comte, Matt Raimo, and Suraj Shah for data collection support; Daniel Suh for data collection and analysis support; and Andrew Churchill, Vincent Reina, Daniel Suh, and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.
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Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 24 • Issue 1 • March 2018
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 24, 2016
Accepted: Jun 20, 2017
Published online: Nov 8, 2017
Published in print: Mar 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Apr 8, 2018
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