How much do Ryanair pad their flight times?

[crofty1984]

Just sat in Budapest airport with a delayed Ryanair flight. Was wondering when I’d actually land at Stansted.

[hutchst]

A bit late with the reply (at least I hope so) but you can get the average flight time (airborne) from FR24.

FR8353 for example generally fluctuates between 1.55 and 2.05 so average about 2 hours.

[Deranged Rover]

Mrs DR is irish and has lived in England for over 25 years, so knows that the flight time from the south coast to Dublin is around 55 minutes on a jet, or 1h20 on a turboprop.

The last time we flew Ryanair from Bournemouth, they quoted a flight time of 1hr40 minutes, which meant they could (and did) take off 40 minutes late and still arrive a fraxtion before schedule, allowing them to 'legitimately' play their stupid bloody fanfare.

One of the many reasons I hate Ryanair...

[montymoo]

Block times are what you will see, not the flight times. The pilots or cabin crew will tell you the flight time when on board, flight times change daily depending on wind and the planned route.

But obviously on some routes there will be padding, and on somedays its rather excessive.

Having spoke with quite a few of the guys there, you might be surprised to here not all routes are like that.
It does happen on certain days and routes, that the quoted block time can be equal to or less than the flight time. So in order to be on time, they will require, short cuts, depart early or fly faster than planned in the flight plan.

Also padding out there block times too much is counter productive, crews at the Locos are often paid by the block times, if the airlines can reduce the block times, they reduce how much they pay there crews, its a fine balance.

Both easy and ryan operate over 1000 flights a day, if they could knock 10 mins of block time off each sector, with 6 crew...
I'm sure there is quite a saving to be made over the year.

[phil squares]

You do realize padding the block times is a very expensive method of improving on-time performance. I can't speak for FR but every airline I have worked you were paid the greater of Scheduled or Actual, whichever was greater. Once the door is closed and pushback begins, we are on the clock. The clock turns off when you are the arrival city and the engines are off, parking brake set and door open.

While you might have issues with padding the block times, it's not a decision the airlines take lightly and it costs them dearly to do that.

[uncinqsix]

phil squares said:

You do realize padding the block times is a very expensive method of improving on-time performance. I can't speak for FR but every airline I have worked you were paid the greater of Scheduled or Actual, whichever was greater. Once the door is closed and pushback begins, we are on the clock. The clock turns off when you are the arrival city and the engines are off, parking brake set and door open.

While you might have issues with padding the block times, it's not a decision the airlines take lightly and it costs them dearly to do that.

For busy routes with high frequency, increasing block times can even mean the airline has to buy more aircraft. It's not something they're going to do unless they really, really have to.

[Shakermaker]

Sometimes the padding will also depend on which airport you are starting from/going to.

Amsterdam, as an example, its only 45 minutes in the air from London

But try to leave Gatwick at 6am and you could get held up behind a dozen other aircraft vying for that same runway and that can add a few minutes to each departure.

Then when you land, if you happen to land on Runway 1, you're at least a 15 minute taxi from the nearest gate because of how far that is from the terminal. So some "padding" is needed to account for these variables and how likely they are to occur, meaning your flight will show about 70 minutes total for that 45 minute flight

[alangla]

Deranged Rover said:

Mrs DR is irish and has lived in England for over 25 years, so knows that the flight time from the south coast to Dublin is around 55 minutes on a jet, or 1h20 on a turboprop.

The last time we flew Ryanair from Bournemouth, they quoted a flight time of 1hr40 minutes, which meant they could (and did) take off 40 minutes late and still arrive a fraxtion before schedule, allowing them to 'legitimately' play their stupid bloody fanfare.

One of the many reasons I hate Ryanair...

Is Dublin not stupidly congested though? Last time I flew out of there, we were waiting ages on the taxiway and looking at FR24, there's often groups of planes circling before landing as with Heathrow.

[louiebaby]

The block time will always be a trade off between lots of things. You need to give the flight deck enough time to fly at the most cost effective speed (which takes into account fuel, staff costs and aircraft maintenance).

You also need to take into account potential weather, limitations at both airports, and the slot times at the busier airport.

You also want to get full utilisation out of your very expensive airliner, and consider the customer experience too.

It's quite the juggling act. Block times for the same flight may vary by Season, Weekday or Weekend, and whether the flight is in a Peak time during the day too.

Airlines often consider huge amounts of historical data to try and maximise the number of flights that would have landed between -10 mins and +5 mins of the predicted Block Time, for instance.

Possibly.

If Ryanair are unable to fit an extra pair of flights in due to crew or airport restrictions, they may well choose to pad the blocks a little to give them a chance of better on time performance. As already mentioned though, it's an expensive way of routinely gaining better on time performance.

[User33678888]

Almost all flights got a fair bit longer when EU261 compensation rules really kicked in after a few lawsuits made practically all delays the fault of the airline and thus compensation worthy.
Paying EUR250+ to each passenger they delay over 3 hours is also very expensive.
It's a balancing act for the airlines between optimally utilising their planes whilst not landing themselves with eg 50k compensation bills.