Well, when both flights are operating nearly full, why would you eliminate one? Between the 2 flights we offer over 260 seats in that time frame. What are you going to reeplace them with? The spare A330 we have just sitting around?
As a matter of fact, they
were both full on the occasions that I happened to be on one of them.
US East management has been bleating for years about "seat mile costs" and "labor costs" (excluding the cost of vice-presidents, which they have more of than Southwest, JetBlue, and AirTran
combined). Here is a classic example. Two aircraft and two crews flying between the same city pairs within eight minutes of each other.
Talk about seat mile costs!
Where are all those 767's that aren't going to Europe this time of year? I'm sure they aren't
all in maintenance.
It's winter. People from the northeast want to go where it's warm. The 767 from PHL to SJU is a good idea. Why not expand that thinking to other warm-weather markets -- like Florida, the Caribbean, the Southwest, and California -- seasonally?
US East regularly flies 757's on some of its
hourly flights between BOS and PHL. Now
there's a really efficient use of a long-range, almost-200-seat airplane. Other than LAS, I'll bet no US East 757 or 767 has been west of the Mississippi in five years.
Granted, the Sept. 27 merger closing date was too close to the big autumn schedule change. However, there seemed to be plenty of time to "synergize" by the February schedule change.
From what I've seen so far it would appear to be business as usual.