MarkMyWords
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- Aug 20, 2002
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At first it was just a rumor that the November Schedule would take PHL from a rolling hub to a banking hub. Now I have seen information in print and confirmed it through 3 reliable sources. My question is why? What are the benefits of banking PHL, versus rolling it? I would love to hear any factual data from anyone with real hard figures and facts to support this decision. It seems to me that with the current price of fuel, that this decision is going to cost us a lot more in wasted fuel almost daily. Many of you know that I have advocated rolling the PHL hub for the last 4 years (all the way back ot Plane Business) and when it finally happened, I felt it was a great win-win for the PHL operation and to reduce costs.
The benefits of Rolling PHL:
1. With the previous banking of the PHL hub, we would have a Ground Stop nearly every morning due to excessive demand on the airport. It always seemed to happen during the peak morning bank starting at around 0730-0830. If the airport was on an East operation, you could expect the delays to grow tremendously.
2. A/C productivity was touted (by the company) as producing the equivalent of 27 airplanes to the system when the operation went from banking to rolling.
3. This allowed our assets (airplanes, employees, gates, crews) to become much more productive without adding any additional airplanes to the fleet.
4. Reduced fuel costs. With the banking hub, airplanes departed the gate in PHL and the first airplanes would take approx 10 minutes to get from the gate to the departure end of the runway, but if you were behind the first set of departures, taxi times could be up to an hour from out to off. Again, if we were on an East operation, departure delays would be well in excess of 1 hour. With the rolling hub our departure taxi performance reduced out to off times to anywhere from 10-30 minutes with the larger taxi time being when the airport was on an East operation. Average out to off droped from 45 minutes with a banking hub to 20 minutes with a rolling hub. That has to be a huge cost savings. (any idea how many gallons of fuel a B733 burns per minute at idle or while taxing?)
5. Delays and misconnects. With the rolling hub, if a flight is an hour late, the majority of customers are still going to make thier connections. With a banking hub, if you arrive an hour late, chances are you will miss the entire bank of flights and nearly everyone will need to be reaccomodated. As an example, if I am a gate agent in ORF and the 1425 flight to PHL is delayed 1 hour, I will misconnect to 6 flights. Now if I am working the 1315 flight to CLT, and the flight takes a 1 hour delay, I will misconnect people to 13 flights and sub-min connect another 5. With the spikes in peak arrivals in PHL, the potential for increased arrival delays increases.
6. Since all the flights depart in a short period of time, when we have a deicing event in PHL, the delays will be even higher. With the steady flow of the rolling hub, demand on the deicers is constant. With the banking hub, demand is compact and if you are in the back of the line, could take hours to get to the deicer and then to the runway.
7. Demands on the ATC system. With the rolling hub the demand on ATC is constant and when there are GDP's the delays were lower then when the hub was banked. With the banking hub, our delays during a GDP would get to be in excess of 5-6 hours depending on what the arrival rate was. ATC applauded our new schedule when we went from banking to rolling because it eased the demands on ATC.
Given all of the above information/speculation on my part, rolling the PHL hub was a great idea. I have no idea why they would go back to operating PHL in a manner that was detrimental to the entire operation and INCREASE costs. We should be looking for every way possible to cut costs, especially associated with fuel. Why would we be going back to an antiquated hub system in a city like PHL that has been proven, time and again, not to work?
With that being said, I would also like to make another opbservation. With the reduction of 60 airplanes from our fleet there will be associated reductions in staffing. If rolling PHL produced the equivalent of 27 additional airplanes to the system, then banking PHL would reduce flying by almost the same number. So in essence we will be seeing the loss of 87 mainline airplanes from the system. If each airplane flys an average of 6 legs a day, we could see mainline flying reduced by over 500 flights a day when it is all said and done.
Now, as far as I have read, (and please correct me if I am wrong) Air Wisconsin is bringing in 75 airplanes to US. We have not dissolved the Mesa express contract, so in essence, the Air Wisconson planes are replacing the lost mainline airplanes and not Mesa. Republic has taken delivery of 3 E170 airplanes that US couldn't so that reduces the total loss of airplanes to 9 system wide....and that is without any additional deliveries to Republic or any other contract carriers. We could see mainline flying reduced to around 1000 flights a day from the current 1500 (approx totals). So with the loss of 1/3 of the flying comes the loss of 1/3 of the jobs at mainline - either through attrition or furlough. If the current ask from CWA is any indication of what will happen, US will lose another 1/3 of it's front line work force, in addition to most of the support jobs in CCY, RIDC and INT. Very few mid and low level managers are being offered a job (or are not willing to transfer). Most of the executives are not coming for the ride. So we will be lucky to see 1/2 of the mainline employees transition to the full merger.
The benefits of Rolling PHL:
1. With the previous banking of the PHL hub, we would have a Ground Stop nearly every morning due to excessive demand on the airport. It always seemed to happen during the peak morning bank starting at around 0730-0830. If the airport was on an East operation, you could expect the delays to grow tremendously.
2. A/C productivity was touted (by the company) as producing the equivalent of 27 airplanes to the system when the operation went from banking to rolling.
3. This allowed our assets (airplanes, employees, gates, crews) to become much more productive without adding any additional airplanes to the fleet.
4. Reduced fuel costs. With the banking hub, airplanes departed the gate in PHL and the first airplanes would take approx 10 minutes to get from the gate to the departure end of the runway, but if you were behind the first set of departures, taxi times could be up to an hour from out to off. Again, if we were on an East operation, departure delays would be well in excess of 1 hour. With the rolling hub our departure taxi performance reduced out to off times to anywhere from 10-30 minutes with the larger taxi time being when the airport was on an East operation. Average out to off droped from 45 minutes with a banking hub to 20 minutes with a rolling hub. That has to be a huge cost savings. (any idea how many gallons of fuel a B733 burns per minute at idle or while taxing?)
5. Delays and misconnects. With the rolling hub, if a flight is an hour late, the majority of customers are still going to make thier connections. With a banking hub, if you arrive an hour late, chances are you will miss the entire bank of flights and nearly everyone will need to be reaccomodated. As an example, if I am a gate agent in ORF and the 1425 flight to PHL is delayed 1 hour, I will misconnect to 6 flights. Now if I am working the 1315 flight to CLT, and the flight takes a 1 hour delay, I will misconnect people to 13 flights and sub-min connect another 5. With the spikes in peak arrivals in PHL, the potential for increased arrival delays increases.
6. Since all the flights depart in a short period of time, when we have a deicing event in PHL, the delays will be even higher. With the steady flow of the rolling hub, demand on the deicers is constant. With the banking hub, demand is compact and if you are in the back of the line, could take hours to get to the deicer and then to the runway.
7. Demands on the ATC system. With the rolling hub the demand on ATC is constant and when there are GDP's the delays were lower then when the hub was banked. With the banking hub, our delays during a GDP would get to be in excess of 5-6 hours depending on what the arrival rate was. ATC applauded our new schedule when we went from banking to rolling because it eased the demands on ATC.
Given all of the above information/speculation on my part, rolling the PHL hub was a great idea. I have no idea why they would go back to operating PHL in a manner that was detrimental to the entire operation and INCREASE costs. We should be looking for every way possible to cut costs, especially associated with fuel. Why would we be going back to an antiquated hub system in a city like PHL that has been proven, time and again, not to work?
With that being said, I would also like to make another opbservation. With the reduction of 60 airplanes from our fleet there will be associated reductions in staffing. If rolling PHL produced the equivalent of 27 additional airplanes to the system, then banking PHL would reduce flying by almost the same number. So in essence we will be seeing the loss of 87 mainline airplanes from the system. If each airplane flys an average of 6 legs a day, we could see mainline flying reduced by over 500 flights a day when it is all said and done.
Now, as far as I have read, (and please correct me if I am wrong) Air Wisconsin is bringing in 75 airplanes to US. We have not dissolved the Mesa express contract, so in essence, the Air Wisconson planes are replacing the lost mainline airplanes and not Mesa. Republic has taken delivery of 3 E170 airplanes that US couldn't so that reduces the total loss of airplanes to 9 system wide....and that is without any additional deliveries to Republic or any other contract carriers. We could see mainline flying reduced to around 1000 flights a day from the current 1500 (approx totals). So with the loss of 1/3 of the flying comes the loss of 1/3 of the jobs at mainline - either through attrition or furlough. If the current ask from CWA is any indication of what will happen, US will lose another 1/3 of it's front line work force, in addition to most of the support jobs in CCY, RIDC and INT. Very few mid and low level managers are being offered a job (or are not willing to transfer). Most of the executives are not coming for the ride. So we will be lucky to see 1/2 of the mainline employees transition to the full merger.
