RewardExpert analyzed five years of airline on-time performance statistics to determine which airlines, airports and dates are most likely to experience delays during the 2018 spring travel season.
Introduction
Who doesn’t want a change of pace after the monotonous months of winter? Like clockwork and bears, wanderlust awakens in us at the very first signs of oncoming spring, and there are fortunately many vernal holidays for those of us who are not students and need a halfway decent pretext or excuse. Unlike clockwork and rather more like bears, the spring travel season can be quite unpredictable, especially as compared to travel during the weeks before and after Thanksgiving and Christmas.
In the spring, everyone is doing their own thing: spring break occurs at different times at different schools, and at different times each year; Passover and Easter are observed at different times every year, up to a month apart (in 2016, more than a month’s time separated Easter Sunday and the end of Passover), and Easter doesn’t always come at the same time as Easter (Orthodox, that is, which in 2016 came after Passover ended); and Memorial Day weekend wanders around the end of May.
RewardExpert analyzed five years’ worth of data for every day from March 1st through May 31st, to forecast delays and crowds for each day. Airport and airline performance was rather more straightforward: we aggregated airport/airline on-time performance data for each month and the three month period overall.