Airline schedule buffers and flight delays: A discrete model

Abstract

This paper revisits the airline schedule-buffer choice problem analyzed by Brueckner et al. (2021) using a simpler model where the random shocks influencing flight times are discrete rather than continuous. The analysis yields closed-form solutions for the flight and ground buffers as well as full comparative-static results, neither of which were available in the earlier paper. The paper also explores several extensions to the model that were not present in the previous paper.