4 ms·

One flight a day for 90,000 flights is 246 years. You are right.

by tus88 7y ago

phire 7y ago
Sometimes they fly routes that are only 30min long. With a 30min turnaround, that could mean a flight every hour. If they kept one plane flying round trips all day, they might fit 16 flights into a day and theoretically burn through the 90,000 cycles in under 16 years.
- acjohnson55 7y ago
  Are there examples of routes like this you know of where a 737 is used?
  - markdown 7y ago
    There are routes like this, but none with anywhere near the ridiculous schedules (16 flights per day) suggested.
    - JorgeGT 7y ago
      The Madrid-Barcelona "air shuttle" by Iberia has up to 26 flights a day in each direction https://www.iberia.com/es/news-updates/relaunched-the-air-shuttle/ https://www.iberia.com/es/news-updates/relaunched-the-air-sh... but they use more than one plane. Still, a lot of cycles! In the peak hours there can be a plane leaving each 15 min. You don't need to book a specific one, just a ticket for the shuttle service and then you just turn up at any time.
  - moandcompany 7y ago
    LAX-LAS, LAX-SJC, LAX-OAK for example. Not quite 30minute flights but approaching there at ~40min and ~50min. Southwest airlines for example exclusively flies a fleet of 737-type variants. Cadence for some of these flights can be over 10x daily, in each direction. The total fleet can see 4k+ flights per day.
    - PavlikPaja 7y ago
      https://www.distance.to/ https://www.distance.to/ says all around one hour. Why don't you build railroads in America? Such short flights should not exist.
      - varjag 7y ago
        One hour flights are fairly typical in most of the world. Yes, also in progressive Europe.
        gmueckl 7y ago
        Yes, they exist in Europe, they ban be dirt cheap, executed by companies run by penny pinchers and mostly superfluous. Going by train is in many cases faster because it gets you from city center toncity center without any airport overhead. But it also costs a multiple of a plane ticket, which should not be the case.
        ChuckNorris89 7y ago
        Yes but the cases when taking such short flights instead of trains make sense is when you commute form a small city airport to an international hub for a layover to an international flight and that saves you lots of time as you've already been through security once and you're already inside the airport fairly close to your departure gate so you can arrive pretty close time wise to your next flight as opposed to having to commute from the train station to the airport and be there ~2 hours before the flight to clear security and all. Nobody takes the plane for 30 min to get from city center to city center, we do it because we have to catch another flight from that city's airport and it's quicker by plane.
        Marsymars 7y ago
        To note - very small city airports don't have security to pass through. Of course, at those population densities, trains don't make sense anyway.
  - nickjj 7y ago
    With South West I took a 737 (definitely not the MAX, probably the NG) a few times from ISP (Long Island, NY) to BWI (Baltimore / Washington). It's not 30 minutes but close enough at 40-45 minutes. These flights were within the last 2 years.
  - marcus0x62 7y ago
    Atlanta to Nashville on Southwest. That route usually has a flight time of around 35 minutes.
  - dredmorbius 7y ago
    Not positive of aircraft used, but flights may be as short as 2 minutes: https://www.tripsavvy.com/the-worlds-shortest-scheduled-flights-4101228 https://www.tripsavvy.com/the-worlds-shortest-scheduled-flig...
  - phire 7y ago
    Air NZ used to fly 737s between CHC and WLG. Runway to Runway flight time can be as little as 30min if the wind is blowing in the right direction. Feels weird because there is only about 5min of cruising between accent and decent. However, demand wasn't high enough to justify non-stop round trips, they replaced the 737s with two A320 flights a day, with a bunch of ATR-72 and Dash 8 flights throughout the day. The classic example is of course Hawaii Air Flight 243. Before the incident, that airframe accumulated 89,680 cycles in 19 years (over 35,496 flight hours) doing short hops between Hawaiian islands.
  - tzs 7y ago
    Here was one that reached almost 90k cycles in 20 years due to a lot of short flights [1]. Total flight hours were 35k, so an average flight was under 25 minutes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243

One flight a day for 90,000 flights is 246 years. You are right.

by tus88 7y ago

One flight a day for 90,000 flights is 246 years. You are right.

Sometimes they fly routes that are only 30min long. With a 30min turnaround, that could mean a flight every hour. If they kept one plane flying round trips all day, they might fit 16 flights into a day and theoretically burn through the 90,000 cycles in under 16 years.

acjohnson55 7y ago
Are there examples of routes like this you know of where a 737 is used?
- markdown 7y ago
  There are routes like this, but none with anywhere near the ridiculous schedules (16 flights per day) suggested.
  - JorgeGT 7y ago
    The Madrid-Barcelona "air shuttle" by Iberia has up to 26 flights a day in each direction https://www.iberia.com/es/news-updates/relaunched-the-air-shuttle/ https://www.iberia.com/es/news-updates/relaunched-the-air-sh... but they use more than one plane. Still, a lot of cycles! In the peak hours there can be a plane leaving each 15 min. You don't need to book a specific one, just a ticket for the shuttle service and then you just turn up at any time.
- moandcompany 7y ago
  LAX-LAS, LAX-SJC, LAX-OAK for example. Not quite 30minute flights but approaching there at ~40min and ~50min. Southwest airlines for example exclusively flies a fleet of 737-type variants. Cadence for some of these flights can be over 10x daily, in each direction. The total fleet can see 4k+ flights per day.
  - PavlikPaja 7y ago
    https://www.distance.to/ https://www.distance.to/ says all around one hour. Why don't you build railroads in America? Such short flights should not exist.
    - varjag 7y ago
      One hour flights are fairly typical in most of the world. Yes, also in progressive Europe.
      - gmueckl 7y ago
        Yes, they exist in Europe, they ban be dirt cheap, executed by companies run by penny pinchers and mostly superfluous. Going by train is in many cases faster because it gets you from city center toncity center without any airport overhead. But it also costs a multiple of a plane ticket, which should not be the case.
        ChuckNorris89 7y ago
        Yes but the cases when taking such short flights instead of trains make sense is when you commute form a small city airport to an international hub for a layover to an international flight and that saves you lots of time as you've already been through security once and you're already inside the airport fairly close to your departure gate so you can arrive pretty close time wise to your next flight as opposed to having to commute from the train station to the airport and be there ~2 hours before the flight to clear security and all. Nobody takes the plane for 30 min to get from city center to city center, we do it because we have to catch another flight from that city's airport and it's quicker by plane.
        Marsymars 7y ago
        To note - very small city airports don't have security to pass through. Of course, at those population densities, trains don't make sense anyway.
- nickjj 7y ago
  With South West I took a 737 (definitely not the MAX, probably the NG) a few times from ISP (Long Island, NY) to BWI (Baltimore / Washington). It's not 30 minutes but close enough at 40-45 minutes. These flights were within the last 2 years.
- marcus0x62 7y ago
  Atlanta to Nashville on Southwest. That route usually has a flight time of around 35 minutes.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Not positive of aircraft used, but flights may be as short as 2 minutes: https://www.tripsavvy.com/the-worlds-shortest-scheduled-flights-4101228 https://www.tripsavvy.com/the-worlds-shortest-scheduled-flig...
- phire 7y ago
  Air NZ used to fly 737s between CHC and WLG. Runway to Runway flight time can be as little as 30min if the wind is blowing in the right direction. Feels weird because there is only about 5min of cruising between accent and decent. However, demand wasn't high enough to justify non-stop round trips, they replaced the 737s with two A320 flights a day, with a bunch of ATR-72 and Dash 8 flights throughout the day. The classic example is of course Hawaii Air Flight 243. Before the incident, that airframe accumulated 89,680 cycles in 19 years (over 35,496 flight hours) doing short hops between Hawaiian islands.
- tzs 7y ago
  Here was one that reached almost 90k cycles in 20 years due to a lot of short flights [1]. Total flight hours were 35k, so an average flight was under 25 minutes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243