An Investigation into the Determinants of Flight Cancellations

This paper uses Bureau of Transportation data on 35 million domestic flights between 1995 and 2001 to investigate the determinants of flight cancellations. This paper is novel in two regards since it focuses exclusively on flight cancellations and it explores the service quality and flight revenue relationship. We find that carriers have some control over the occurrence of flight cancellations given that cancellations are significantly less likely on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday and for the last flight of day. There is some evidence that links cancellations with revenue