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Schedule Creep: In Search Of An Uncongested Baseline Block Time By Examining Scheduled Flight Block Times Worldwide 1986–2016, Terence P. C. Fan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Based on a stratified random sampling of airlines’ schedules for 200 heavily travelled directional nonstop airport pairs, this paper examines systematically how scheduled block times in non-stop flights have changed from 1986 to 2016. Three econometric analyses, by way of a 10th percentile quantile regression, 15th percentile quantile regression and ordinary least-squares regression, show that after accounting for the effects of air traffic growth, airport-specific congestion, flight delays, number of seat per flight, aircraft type, flight heading, airport slot policy, other airport-specific anomalies, airline-specific policies and changes in crude oil price, scheduled block times have been growing at a pace …