AirHelp shares the results of its market report that explores the impact of last year’s flight disruptions on the economy and the environment across Europe, the US and Australia. Flight disruptions were classified as cancellations and delays of more than 15 minutes.
In 2022, at least 200 million passengers were affected by delays and cancellations in the US, 330 million in Europe and 12 million in Australia, losing a total of 650 million hours of their time in delays and requiring 30 million overnight hotel stays.
Economic Impact
AirHelp investigated the economic impact of flight disruptions across four metrics: incremental operations time for airlines, value of time lost by passengers, spillover effects on other segments of the economy, and additional costs of accommodating flight cancellations. In 2022, flight disruptions generated an impact on the economy of $30-34 billion in the US, $27-32 billion in Europe and up to $1.5 billion in Australia – up to $67.5 billion in total and approximately 11% more than in 2019 despite there being less traffic.
Cost to passengers had the biggest impact, making up 37% of the total cost to the economy due to the value of time and productivity lost by passengers due to delays.
Contributing 32% to the total economic impact was the cost to airlines, such as the cost of additional fuel, crew, and maintenance. Spillover costs (16%) with costs for food services, hospitality and retail, and cancellation costs (15%) like hotels and other arrangements for impacted passengers, also play a significant role.
Sustainability Impact
Disruptions carry a significant burden on the environment due to the longer flying and taxiing time of delayed planes. The report discovered that flight disruptions generate an additional nine million tons of CO2 emissions which equates to annual emissions of approximately two million passenger cars.
Where passengers require hotel nights, meals and transportation due to cancelled and delayed flights, additional and preventable waste is generated. Up to 90,000 tons of waste per year comes as a result of hotel stays and meals for passengers affected by cancellations.
Room for Improvement
Across all three regions, costs to the airline and spillover costs are predicted to increase in line with the growing number of passengers booking flights and the costs of operations. Cancellations were unusually high in 2022 for Europe and Australia and are expected to improve moving forward, while in the US cancellations may worsen before improving.
AirHelp CEO, Tomasz Pawliszyn comments “Flight disruptions are an inconvenience for passengers, airlines and airports, and the impact financially and environmentally has become a leading issue for the industry since the pandemic. To ensure passengers are better protected from disruptions and financial consequences, airlines should improve their communications with passengers, particularly regarding air passenger rights. At AirHelp, we make our regional air passenger rights guides free to access and offer 24/7 online support for those who are facing disruption.“
For more information – You can download the full report here.
