Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
Incidentally, the Q4 2018 results have just emerged from their password-protection. I haven't yet had time to analyse them, but initial indications are that Heathrow has tweaked the fudge factor to inflate the scores by around 55% instead of the customary 40% or so.
Watch this space.
Heathrow has this week belatedly published the results from its Fly Quiet & Green programme for
Q4 2018.
This time around, even a cursory glance at the results is sufficient to illustrate how absurd they are - instead of giving the airlines an average score of around 750 out of 1000, as with previous quarters' results (already grossly inflated), Heathrow has hiked the average score by over 8% to
813 points.
Readers will recall that, under the published rules of the scheme, the expected average (mean and median) score should be around 500 (slightly more if there are tied places for any of the metrics, for example
522 points for the Q4 results).
Not content with inflating the scores even more than usual, Heathrow has also inexplicably excluded 5 of its 50 busiest airlines from the results.
We will never know how China Southern, El Al, Korean Air, Kuwait Airways or Pakistan International Airlines are judged to have performed, because Egyptair short/longhaul, Icelandair (ditto) and MEA longhaul (all with fewer flights than any of the above) have been substituted instead. In fact El Al and China Southern had over three times as many flights as MEA longhaul during Q4.
The "league table" ranking, in descending order of points awarded by Heathrow, includes the bizarre sequence: 9th, 10th,
13th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th,
27th, 20th, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, 25th,
24th, 27th, 28th.
A more detailed look at the Q4 table shows:
a) Individual airline scores are inflated by between 17% and 240%, with the poorest performing carriers receiving the biggest unjustified increase in their score. The 544 points score awarded by Heathrow to MEA shorthaul is over 380 points more than the airline actually merits based on its performance and Heathrow's rules.
b) 48 out of the 50 airlines in Heathrow's table are awarded more than the correctly calculated average (based on Heathrow's data and methodology) of 522.
c) Turkish Airlines longhaul and Jet Airways are given an unexplained hike up the table, each by 15 places, compared to the positions that their performance merits.
d) Among the airlines entitled to feel aggrieved with this quarter's published results include Icelandair shorthaul, relegated 20 places from its rightful position. Turkish Airlines shorthaul, despite meriting 503 points by Heathrow's own methodology, putting it just above Air Malta, bizarrely ends up ranked 21 places below the Maltese carrier.
e) "RAG" (red/amber/green) classifications are again applied inconsistently; for example Thai Airways and TAP, ranked 44th and 45th, respectively, by Heathrow for early/late movements, get an "Amber" for that category while Scandinavian, ranked 34th for that metric by Heathrow, gets a "Red".
f) For the second successive quarter, 180 flights by Finnair's A330 and A350 fleets (out of an airline total of 905) appear not to have been taken into account in calculating the results, with only its narrow-body A320 family flights having been counted.