Connections on a flight from Dubai to Sydney

Question

How many, on average, out of 470 people would miss a connecting flight via Dubai?

Answer 1

This is a complicated question and predicting missed connection rates has been a topic of intense research in yield management since Beckman's famous paper on no-shows in 1958. At the time, the mean no-show rate was approximately 10% in the United States, but carriers did not distinguish between no shows and missed connections. In 1985 American Airlines estimated a spoilage rate of 15% on sold out flights across its network, but improvements in yield management and the adoption of overbooking had mitigated the economic consequences. (Smith et al., 1992.)

The literature typically elides the distinction between a true no show and a missed connection, at least until the 2000s. A classic introduction to the problem is given in Rothstein, 1985, who also discusses some of the relatively primitive models used at the time to predict no shows, including arising through missed connections, but more recent texts are certainly worth reading if you have the mathematical chops for it; for a flavour, see Subramanian et al., 1999, Lawrence et al., 2003, Garrow & Koppelman 2004, and Neuling et al., 2004. (Free versions of these papers can be found online if your library does not subscribe to these journals.)

In terms of historical averages, the specific answer for a specific flight at Dubai will be proprietary information for the carrier there. But even so, it will vary everyday because a passenger arriving originating in London and flying directly to Dubai may be less likely to be delayed than a passenger routeing himself via several points before he gets to his onward flight in Dubai. Thus the historical profile is not necessarily useful in predicting future behaviour, particularly when optimizing close to the margin of noise.

Without access to those internal data collected by the airline, or knowledge of the yield management policies applied by the airline in question, it is hard to speculate. At a typical hub, however, the missed connections rate is often about ~5%, suggesting that on the order of twenty people would be expected to miss their connection on a sold out 470-seater plane. The airline would be obliged to rebook them.