Planes May Fly Longer

[BoeingBoy]

Planes may fly longer

By Thomas Olson
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Tuesday, March 9, 2004

US Airways' revised business plan would have planes fly about two more hours per day and would expand service at the carrier's Philadelphia hub, a union official said Monday.

Article

Jim

 

[BoeingBoy]

To throw my 2 cents in on the above article....

Increased utilization provides the lowest cost seat miles you can have. The CASM of the additional seat miles is in the 4 to 5 cent range, which INCLUDES recalling flight crews to fly the extra time. Notice that this is 1 to 2 cents per seat mile LESS than JetBlue - and they have the lowest CASM in the industry.

If 2 extra hours per day can be achieved, that means that the CASM for those planes drops from our average of about 10.5 cents to about 9 cents.

It's just a shame that it has taken the math whiz so long to figure this out. Maybe his calculator battery was dead.

Jim

 

[MarkMyWords]

It is about time!

I have been shouting from the roof tops for years about rolling PHL.

 

[BoeingBoy]

MarkMyWords,

You are absolutely right. What I am uncertain about from the article is whether the Phillly hub will be truly "rolled" or will just have flights added between the "banks". The article specifically mentions the latter, but also mentions reduced ground time (although an hour is still a long time for a truly "rolled" hub).

Jim

 

[MarkMyWords]

Jim -

I agree.....i think it is going to be a combination of the two. There will be banks and flights rolled in between. Hopefully this is a start and with the additional airplanes they can finally truely make PHL a real rolling hub. Hopefully the service they add is not to just the cities that WN flies to. Get out there and compete on other routes too.

 

[pitguy]

OMG a management decision was made. Wow!

--I still want Dave the New Lorenzo to leave though.

 

[mweiss]

Increased utilization provides the lowest cost seat miles you can have. The CASM of the additional seat miles is in the 4 to 5 cent range, which INCLUDES recalling flight crews to fly the extra time.

Plus, if you can reduce the turn times, you get much better ground crew utilization. Staffing for the bursty nature of hubs necessarily causes significant down time in between the banks.

The only thing bad about rolling hubs is the reduced utility (to pax) of the connections, due to longer average layovers. Cities with enough O&D (such as PHL) can overcome this. I doubt that PIT, with 80% connecting traffic, can make a rolling hub work in a cost-effective manner, but it's hard to tell how elastic demand is relative to layover length.

It'd be quite interesting to do a study on that very metric...perhaps there's more efficiency to be gained through rolling hubs than currently imagined.

 

[jimntx]

To throw my 2 cents in on the above article....

Increased utilization provides the lowest cost seat miles you can have. The CASM of the additional seat miles is in the 4 to 5 cent range, which INCLUDES recalling flight crews to fly the extra time.

Don't bet on recalls. At AA what they have done is simply work crews until they drop with 5-6 leg days and minimum layovers to increase the utilization. One of the worst I heard was overnight Miami-Rio, get into Rio at 8 or 9 in the morning. Return flight to Miami departs Rio at 7 or 8 same evening. Yuck!

 

[a320av8r]

"US Airways spokesman Dave Castelveter said the airline has gradually expanded Philadelphia service this year but he had no comment about aircraft utilization. The latter is among the issues still under negotiation this week with the Air Line Pilots Association."

There is nothing in the pilots contract that restricts higher utilization. More BS.

 

[USA320Pilot]

A320av8r:

Your point is valid, but Tom Olsen was referring to tonight’s working dinner meeting between Bruce Lakefield, the ALPA MEC Officers, ALPA NC, ALPA Advisors, and US Airways management personnel.

This meeting will be the first of a series of upcoming discussions regarding the "Going Forward Plan" and is designed to establish a framework for future talks.

Respectfully,

USA320Pilot

 

[SVQLBA]

Plus, if you can reduce the turn times, you get much better ground crew utilization. Staffing for the bursty nature of hubs necessarily causes significant down time in between the banks.

The only thing bad about rolling hubs is the reduced utility (to pax) of the connections, due to longer average layovers. Cities with enough O&D (such as PHL) can overcome this. I doubt that PIT, with 80% connecting traffic, can make a rolling hub work in a cost-effective manner, but it's hard to tell how elastic demand is relative to layover length.

It'd be quite interesting to do a study on that very metric...perhaps there's more efficiency to be gained through rolling hubs than currently imagined.

With delays creeping back into the system, many travellers avoid booking connections that are near the published minimum connecting times. I'd rather have a 1hr connect and end up with a few minutes to kill, rather than have a heart attack worrying about a 30 minute connect. Given the travails of an A to F connection at PHL, I'd want a couple of hours.

The focus on connect times used to be driven by CRS displaces where screen position was driven by total elapsed time -- the tighter the connection, the higher a flight appeared on a display, and so the higher the sales. Studies of the AA experience with rolling hubs have shown that connect times typically increase by no more than 10-15 minutes. (There was a recent study in Airline Business on this.) I don't think this will have any noticeable impact on bookings.

 

[mweiss]

Studies of the AA experience with rolling hubs have shown that connect times typically increase by no more than 10-15 minutes. (There was a recent study in Airline Business on this.) I don't think this will have any noticeable impact on bookings.

That's truly great news! I didn't realize the time impact was so small. At that size, the time differential is negligible, so there is no excuse not to roll every hub in the country.

 

[BoeingBoy]

mweiss,

To add a little more to the discussion of connecting times with rolling hubs...

An independent study of AMR's change to a rolling hub in ORD showed that the average connection time increased by 7 minutes. At the time they rolled ORD, they had 333 flights a day there - about the same as PHL or CLT. They were able to operate the same number of flights with 5 less airplanes - freeing those planes for other service.

If done properly, rolling a hub does not make major changes in the connection flow and thus doesn't depend on the majority of traffic being O&D. It does need enough flights a day to work well - PIT has probably been reduced so much that it wouldn't work as well there.

Jim

 

[skyflyr69]

Plus, if you can reduce the turn times, you get much better ground crew utilization. Staffing for the bursty nature of hubs necessarily causes significant down time in between the banks.

The only thing bad about rolling hubs is the reduced utility (to pax) of the connections, due to longer average layovers. Cities with enough O&D (such as PHL) can overcome this. I doubt that PIT, with 80% connecting traffic, can make a rolling hub work in a cost-effective manner, but it's hard to tell how elastic demand is relative to layover length.

It'd be quite interesting to do a study on that very metric...perhaps there's more efficiency to be gained through rolling hubs than currently imagined.

AA seems to be dealing with the "reduced utility" connection just fine.
this is good news, perhaps U is on its way to doing good things.............

 

[mweiss]

It does need enough flights a day to work well - PIT has probably been reduced so much that it wouldn't work as well there.

You've piqued my curiosity here. What makes a large number of flights necessary to roll a hub successfully? My sense was that the benefits of rolling a hub are:

1) Reduced turn times (this is where the "extra aircraft" metric shows up)
2) Reduced ground crew, since you have fewer aircraft to service at a time
3) Reduced load on the runway infrastructure, due to fewer movements at a time

Unless you're talking about, say, ten gates in use at a time, I'd think you'd be able to extract these benefits even at a smaller operation.

Could you help me understand what makes PIT too small for this?

Thanks!