A government agency publishes ratings of airlines, ranking highest the

Question

A government agency publishes ratings of airlines, ranking highest the airlines that have the smallest proportion of late flights. The agency's purpose is to establish an objective measure of the relative efficiency of different airlines' personnel in meeting published flight schedules.

Which one of the following, if true, would tend to invalidate use of the ratings for the agency's purpose?

(A) Travelers sometimes have no choice of airlines for a given trip at a given time.

(B) Flights are often made late by bad weather conditions that affect some airlines more that others.

(C) The flight schedules of all airlines allow extra time for flights that go into or out of very busy airports.

(D) Airline personnel are aware that the government agency is monitoring all airline flights for lateness.

(E) Flights are defined as 'late' only if they arrive more that fifteen minutes past their scheduled arrival time, and a record is made of how much alter than fifteen minutes they are.

Bunuel · Accepted Answer

Official Explanation

This question asks you to weaken the case for the effectiveness of the airline ratings. Remember, to weaken an argument, typically you need to show that a suppressed premise of the argument is false. In this case, the argument is based on a questionable suppressed premise. If the ranking system is to be objective, then there cannot be any adverse conditions beyond the airlines’ control that affect some airlines more than others. For instance, some airlines may have a greater proportion of their flights at night, when bad weather is more likely to cause a delay. Hence  the answer is (B) . Choice (D) is second-best. If airline personnel are aware that they are being monitored, then the personnel from a particular airline may institute special efficiency programs for the duration of the monitoring and thus skew the results. But this is only a conjecture; (B) is much more likely to occur.

anandnk · Answer

B looks fine to me.

The efficiency of personnel has no effect if the airline they operate is severly affected by the weather if those personnel are very efficient.

Paul · Answer

B also. To add to Anandnk, B says that bad weather conditions  affect some airlines more that others , thus rendering unfair the judgement layed upon affected airlines;  personel  will not be the cause of the delay and the "relative efficiency of different  airlines' personnel " will be invalidated

aspire · Answer

In that case, would choice validate the argument?

Paul · Answer

I think there is a typo or an omission in your question

anandnk · Answer

The use of ratings is not for the public but for the agency's use. So what people choose has no bearing on the ratings unless more information about size of the airlines is given.

auradediligodo · Answer

Pre-thinking   :

The argument talks about an agency that wants to evaluate the relative efficiency of the personnel in relation to its ability to meet the flight schedule.
Ratings are used but the   question stem   asks us to find a reason why such ratings would be quite useless to make the assessment.

Option B   clearly states that there are some factors such as bad weather that affect the airline companies in different ways and that are out of the scope of the personnel. If that's the case ratings would be quite inaccurate for an objective evaluation of all the companies.

The   other options   are quite irrelevant.

A government agency publishes ratings of airlines, ranking highest the

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