Using ADS-B to estimate ground costs for US Airlines and Airports

Airlines don’t sell you travel, they sell time.  Their entire business is built around schedules. Everything is about time.  And since time is money, let’s take a look at ground time.

As a backdrop, please keep this table in mind, as it’s crucial. This table summarizes operating costs from DOT’s Form 41.  The data is filed by airlines as part of their data sharing with the DOT—our metric looks at operating expenses divided by airborne time.