Tarmac Delay Management

Delays are a fact of life in commercial aviation but that doesn’t mean something can’t be done to minimize their frequency, duration, and their downstream effects. With federal officials strengthening the tarmac-delay rule by imposing severe fines and liabilities on airlines that hold passengers onboard for more than three hours, it’s critical for carriers to take aggressive action to get aircraft in the air as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The trouble is, the amount of manual processes required to coordinate, communicate, collaborate, and document actions taken to prevent long delays is hugely inefficient and error-prone, as likely as not to introduce delays rather than mitigate them. With fines of as much as $27,500 per passenger, a single delayed plane carrying 120 passengers could result in a hit of $3.3 million.

PASSUR’s Tarmac Delay Management solution leverages an extensive surveillance network to automatically track and provide onscreen alerts of potential tarmac delay events, enabling operators to manage such events proactively. With this solution, carriers will be able to:

• Reduce and/or prevent the absolute number of tarmac delay events
• Reduce the number of flights that exceed predefined trigger points (e.g., 60-minute delays, 90-minute delays, 120-minute delays, etc.)

Part of the PASSUR Integrated Traffic Management (PITM) program, PASSUR’s Tarmac Delay Management solution supports automated systems such as gate management programs and provides detailed reports and visual replays for post-operations analysis. It addresses key requirements/recommendations of the DOT ruling on tarmac delay events, provides a single platform to manage the entire airline network from one location, and gives airlines the flexibility to manage events internally, in collaboration with the airport, or both.