Three incidents lately involving passenger-passenger and/or passenger-crew conflicts (all in regard to reclining seatbacks) have resulted in pilots making unscheduled landings at the nearest airport so that they could kick the miscreants to the curb before continuing on their journey.
How much does such an unscheduled landing cost the airline? Certainly it will vary widely depending on the aircraft involved, but for typical commercial aircraft (i.e. anything sized between a 737 and a 747) what order of magntude are we talking about? $1000? $10,000? $100,000? Some costs that come to mind:
-perhaps an extra hour of time for the flight crew
-aircraft maintenance requirements and shortened life (one more pressurization cycle on the airframe, one more takeoff cycle on the engines, one more landing cycle on the tires, etc.)
-airport landing fee at the divert airport
-fuel used during the diversion
-consequences of delayed arrival at final destination (delaying next departure, reticketing passengers who missed connecting flights)
-…anything else known to aviation buffs that I’m not aware of?
There was a TV report about the latest incident, on the Delta LGA-PBI flight that diverted to JAX, quoting the extra cost at $6000, according to Delta.
As of April or so, it would cost about $4,000 to land a 767 at La Guardia. No mention of refueling costs.
The brave can take a look at this 75 page PDF of Miami-Dade’s fee structure, but it’s not for the faint of heart. Unless you’re going to Japan or flying a 747, a safe estimate of landing fees would be $3,000-4,000 for most commercial planes at most US airports
IIRC, the news item from earlier today said a diversion costs about $6,000 per hour.
A PDFfrom the International Air Transport Association (IATA) summarizes the average takeoff/landing cycle cost at $2,547 in 2012. The relevant snippet from the executive summary:
“The average maintenance cost was $1,014 per flight hour, 2,547 per flight cycle and 3.4 Mill. per aircraft. Engine maintenance remained the highest cost segment; 41% of direct maintenance cost.”
Sorting out the resulting chaos of rebooking pax with missed connections, possibly needing to house them overnight, etc would be the hard part to assess.
The most expensive case is a big aircraft doing a long haul divert from mid-ocean to somewhere to drop off ill, injured, or disruptive passenger(s). That can turn into a real ordeal with no spare crew, need to accommodate 400 people overnight before you can continue to destination, disruption to the flights the aircraft was supposed to have done during the interim, etc. They tell us the company figures $50K-$75K worst case for that scenario.
If the airplane also breaks down at the divert location, it only gets more expensive, although it’s arguable whether to blame the breakdown directly on the divert versus it just being the breaks of the game.
For a domestic divert not too far out of the way, the numbers other folks are quoting above match what they tell us. You might be able to do a drop-in divert right along your intended route in a small jet mid-day for $3000, but it’d be tight.
Close to worst case happened to a LAN Chile flight several years ago when it diverted to the Cayman Islands.
IIRC, it was a Boeing 767 with a nearly full load bound from somewhere on the east coast of the US to Chile. The fight diverted to Cayman due to smoke in the cabin.
An initial inspection did not find the problem. All passengers were accommodated overnight in the only available rooms which were at beachfront resorts. Meanwhile the airline flew in its own mechanics.
And they searched. And still didn’t find the problem. And the passengers were accommodated for a second night.
Finally they found the problem. The cookies in the oven in the galley burned.
Related question. How much does it cost for a fly by due to an aborted landing?
Obviously a whole lot less than a crash landing. There’s got to be additional fuel, re-queueing, probably some definable effect on the plane’s maintenance schedule, the ripple effect as other flights are held up temporarily. I am assuming that there have been costings done on these and that it is not trivial. Not as high as a diversion, landing and then another take-off, but still something.
It will cost whatever the hourly rate of the aircraft is plus anything for the crew. The biggest controllable cost is fuel and it would probably cost around 10 - 15 minutes worth of fuel. For us that’d be about 300 - 450 kg, for bigger aeroplanes the fuel cost would be a lot more. Maintenance costs are not readily definable to the operating crew and don’t factor into the thinking much.
Ripple effect on other flights is minimal in my neck of the woods as you can always be slotted back into the flow. Following aircraft may need to be slowed by a couple of minutes but slowing down can save fuel anyway so that won’t necessarily cost money.
Extra time for the crew doesn’t necessarily cost anything. Many airlines pay a salary plus overtime or an hourly rate with a guaranteed number of hours. If you aren’t going into overtime or you haven’t achieved the min guaranteed hours then the cost for an extra 10 minutes is nil. In my company we are very rarely in overtime and 99.9% of missed approaches would have no associated crewing cost. Other companies have their crews working in the pay-per-hour range regularly and they would have crewing costs.
There are also possible costs due to follow on effects on the rosters if one or more of the crew can’t do what they were originally planned to do because of the extra duty time worked on the disrupted flight. Flying replacement crew around costs money as does paying callout fees for people asked to work on a day off etc.
Why not just restrain the miscreants until the destination? Surely a loudmouthed drunk screaming obscenities while handcuffed to his chair is going to make the flight unpleasant, but being handcuffed to his chair, he won’t be able to harm anyone.
Safety mainly. If an emergency evacuation is needed, he’s going to be in trouble. Meanwhile, he’s at least pissing off and probably worrying everyone on board, including the pilots and especially the poor schmucks who have to sit next to him for hours on a full flight, which they all are, and is taking the FA’s attention away from the other passengers. A diversion might cost less dollars than the ticket refunds the airline might feel, or be, obliged to pay, too.
Regulations require that unruly passengers not be restrained to the aircraft, locked in a closet, etc. Handcuffed and placed in a seat with a seat belt fastened around their waist per normal is about the limit.
Which on a 100% full flight means somebody is sitting next to this problem child. And somebody else is sitting in the seat in front of them.
I’ll not speculate publicly on how we’d handle somebody who really refused to behave even after we’ve done all the approved things.
In the Sunwing situation,the cost was estimated at $50,000. But in that case, the airliner returned to Toronto after it was more than halfway to Cuba, off the coast of South Carolina. Most of that cost was probably fuel. WG 656 is normally a Boeing 737-800. Not sure about the -800 but the 737-900ER costs just shy of $9000 per hour to operate.
The $50K doesn’t include the cost of the CF-18 escorts which were scrambled after the drunks apparently also made threats against the aircraft. The fun part is that the airline will probably sue the drunks to recover the cost.
a 767-200 would burn about 1700 gallons per hour times $3/gallon so that would be about $5,100. Landing fees vary widely. JFK would be $6.16 per 1,000 gross wt so that would come out to $1,940 for the same plane.
After that there’s the problem with a plane pulled out of rotation. So add the price of a spare plane unless they can complete the flight in time for the next one it was intended for.
Add in $1000 for a ground crew if they take up somebody’s ramp space.
One of my first jobs was at Edwards AFB in the early/mid-'80s. An engineer I worked with said that the F-16 they were testing burned more in fuel in one sortie than he made in a month.