An aspect of the DoT On-Time data is arrival delays by tail number. Between January and October 2011 there are only two tail numbers that turn up in three of the ten months. They are N74007 and N76062, both are Boeings operated by Continental. The former accumulated 214 average minutes of arrival delays for the ten months through October and the latter accumulated 371 average delayed arrival minutes.
How valuable is a minute? LeehamNews has this great titbit. ““Boeing estimates this at $25 for regional, $125 for a very large carrier or cargo airline, $50 minute for a carrier like Southwest Airlines and $100 for a US legacy airline.” This is the value of air time – but if gives a clue to just how much time is worth to an airline.
Among other tail numbers, here is a table listing the top twenty tail numbers with the 
highest average arrival delays in minutes. Mostly it seems to be a story of older airplanes. Amazingly, not one MD80 or DC9 in the table and only one Airbus and Embraer.
As the podcasts with Boeing and Airbus this week showed, airlines are very keen to replace older airplanes.
The On-Time data offers lots of great nuggets on how airlines and airports are performing. Unlike the Form 41 data, the On-Time data comes out sooner. We will be further developing our use of this data.
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