6 ms·

>Why don't they use wide-body planes more Off the top of my mind, there are some other non-fuel factors 1- A competitive schedule in a business market include

>Why don't they use wide-body planes more Off the top of my mind, there are some other non-fuel factors 1- A competitive schedule in a business market includes offering a high number of frequencies, so running several flights on a narrowbody is preferred over a widebody 2- Building off of the above, you can segment your customers better, charging more for business-friendly timing 3- You mention seeing the tiny Skywest regional jets at SFO. While I'm not too familiar with United's route structure, I'd guess that most of these routes may not support a narrowbody (either because of mainline costs or demand) 4- Delta apparently used to run tiny regional jets out of JFK when Jet Blue was starting up in order to squat on slots, but also disrupt operations, since Delta would be much less impacted than Jet Blue.

JudgeWapner 8y ago
I think #2 is the strongest case. Wendover Productions talked about that a lot, how you can have 6 different prices for the same flight. #4 is terrible, that's not competition, its warfare. Again Wendover talked about something similar. Icelandair tried going to Dallas, so American immediately began a Dallas route to make their competitor suffer. That may technically be "competition", but the spirit of it is malicious. I think we should revert to the hub and spoke system. Have huge jets that do nothing but travel between hubs all day. Let the business people have their half, and let the cattle buy essentially last-minute bus-tickets to traverse the country. Then book your ticket from the hub to home. Even though that's inefficient compared to direct routing, a 2 or 3 hour ground delay costs the same (in time) as going from CHI->LAX and then backtracking to phoenix or vegas to your final destination. Another thing I think could work would be "JIT" routing. where you dont even know where your connections will be, until the day you fly. then you could have sudden, "ad-hoc hubs" that suit that particular day's distribution of travelers. Each morning a huge rack of computers could solve that day's "travelling-salesman problem" of weather, demand, location of aircraft, etc and come up with an optimal solution. people wouldn't like this at first, becuase of fear of the unknown, but I suspect it would lead to monumental increases in efficiency.
- T-hawk 8y ago
  How do you propose to have crew available for every possible permutation of that routing? It would take an enormous standing population at every airport in the system, only a small portion of which will work on each given day. Good luck finding employees to take on that arrangement. Routing is about scheduling more than just aircraft.
  - JudgeWapner 8y ago
    The crew would be probably the easiest parameter to optimize because they don't have a choice. Let's say the current configuration has a set of crew in PHX and on wednesdays they normally go to denver, 2 hrs away. with a dynamic configuration, they can expect to go on any 2 hour flight or less. the only commitment to the crew is that they are to be returned to their home city on their first day off. If they have enough seniority, then they can be put on the top list of employees to draw from to go to DEN if thats what they want. I don't see the problem. The crew could be routed just as dynamically as the PAX.

JudgeWapner 8y ago

I think #2 is the strongest case. Wendover Productions talked about that a lot, how you can have 6 different prices for the same flight. #4 is terrible, that's not competition, its warfare. Again Wendover talked about something similar. Icelandair tried going to Dallas, so American immediately began a Dallas route to make their competitor suffer. That may technically be "competition", but the spirit of it is malicious. I think we should revert to the hub and spoke system. Have huge jets that do nothing but travel between hubs all day. Let the business people have their half, and let the cattle buy essentially last-minute bus-tickets to traverse the country. Then book your ticket from the hub to home. Even though that's inefficient compared to direct routing, a 2 or 3 hour ground delay costs the same (in time) as going from CHI->LAX and then backtracking to phoenix or vegas to your final destination. Another thing I think could work would be "JIT" routing. where you dont even know where your connections will be, until the day you fly. then you could have sudden, "ad-hoc hubs" that suit that particular day's distribution of travelers. Each morning a huge rack of computers could solve that day's "travelling-salesman problem" of weather, demand, location of aircraft, etc and come up with an optimal solution. people wouldn't like this at first, becuase of fear of the unknown, but I suspect it would lead to monumental increases in efficiency.

T-hawk 8y ago
How do you propose to have crew available for every possible permutation of that routing? It would take an enormous standing population at every airport in the system, only a small portion of which will work on each given day. Good luck finding employees to take on that arrangement. Routing is about scheduling more than just aircraft.
- JudgeWapner 8y ago
  The crew would be probably the easiest parameter to optimize because they don't have a choice. Let's say the current configuration has a set of crew in PHX and on wednesdays they normally go to denver, 2 hrs away. with a dynamic configuration, they can expect to go on any 2 hour flight or less. the only commitment to the crew is that they are to be returned to their home city on their first day off. If they have enough seniority, then they can be put on the top list of employees to draw from to go to DEN if thats what they want. I don't see the problem. The crew could be routed just as dynamically as the PAX.