Is airspace more crowded on days following cancellations or a large number of delays [closed]

Question

I am looking at some data form the BTS and trying to understand some spikes in month to month Volume delays. From my understanding a Volume delay is due to the volume of airplanes, causing the ATC to manage more take offs and landings and therefore slowing down the whole process.

My problem is that for volume delays bts only provides monthly aggregates. So I have data with a spike for Volume but the number of flights on that same month is normal or sometimes less than average. So I am assuming that something is happening at the daily level that is completely lost in the aggregation.

This all boils down to my question:

Is there more passengers flying after a lot of flight cancellations/delays -- If so, does than mean more flights or more passengers per flight?

Answer 1

When flights are cancelled, it's quite rare for all the same passengers to be rescheduled en masse on a brand new (previously nonexistent) flight the next day. Airlines don't have the spare aircraft and crews to do that sort of thing. Passengers are rebooked on whatever flights are available, and some may have to wait several days. Some passengers will just decide not to travel at all.

If there are ATC delays due to volume, it's usually of one of a few reasons:

• The airport is over-capacity in that it has more flights scheduled than it can reasonably accommodate. This is usually minimized through slot restrictions and better scheduling.
• Temporary conditions mean a larger than normal number of aircraft are coming to the airport. This could happen if the airport was closed for a period of time and there is now pent up demand to land there. Or even if a major sporting event is scheduled and there's a large volume of private jets.
• Most commonly, because weather conditions are such that fewer than the normal number of aircraft can occupy the same airspace at once. The wind speed and direction may be such that planes need to use different runways and approach paths than the typical configuration. Bad weather means that aircraft will have to take unusual routes to be vectored around heavy storms, which limits the number of flights that can pass through a particular chunk of sky. Poor visibility at the airport means that pilots cannot see the runway and other air traffic and so will have to rely on instruments to land, which requires more separation between landing aircraft. The same situation can occur if a runway is closed for maintenance or an aircraft incident.

In other words, when there are volume-related delays, it's not always the case that there are significantly more flights coming to that airport, but that the airport is unable to handle its usual volume of traffic.

Short answer: more passengers per flight.