Disruption in the air: The impact of flight rerouting due to air traffic control strikes

When airspace sectors are disrupted airlines have the decision to either cancel, delay or reroute scheduled flights. The aim of this paper is to estimate the additional kilometres flown due to rerouted flights during air traffic control strikes. We use detailed flight-level data and information on over sixty strikes in European airspace between 2015 and 2017. We combine a difference-in-difference approach with statistical matching procedures to address that strikes do not occur randomly over time. Our estimates show that strikes significantly decrease the horizontal trajectory efficiency of operated flights, aggregating to 4.7 million additional aircraft kilometres over the sample period. This equals about 13.4 kilotonnes of additional fuel consumption and 42.2 kilotonnes of CO2-emissions. Further results suggest that these inefficiencies can be mitigated by measures that preserve continuity of service for overflights during disruptions