Black Magic said:
Thanks for the info. That sounds about right considering what I've read from different news reports. I was confused as US Airways sent out a company memo to employees stating the flight stats of the different hubs and it has AA at LAX with 367 daily departures?! I didn't think it was that big, maybe they meant with codeshares?
367 is definitely a typo. Even adding all the Alaska flights from LAX and international codeshares, and all Eagle regional flights, I don't think you get to 367.
autofixer said:
94 "mainline" departures. What is the combined number of AA, Eagle and US flights?
Looks like 61 or so daily Eagle departures plus the 20-21 daily US departures, so a total of about 176.
Overspeed said:
Peak departures was probably back prior to 2002 when AA had merged with Reno Air and TWA and operated out of two terminals at LAX. The airport is undergoing heavy construction last time I went through there. Maybe AA will get more gates but now DL, UA, and AA will all be operating out of the same side of the airport which could drive a lot of congestion.
Sure, following the RenoAir and then TWA acquisitions, there were far more than 94 daily mainline departures, but a while ago, I reviewed some previous summer schedules from post-2003/04 (after AA had left T-3), and found that AA was operating a few more than 94 daily departures, just from T-4.
Of course, due to its geography, like other west coast airports, LAX suffers from some big peaks and big valleys in its operations, depending on time of day, with some late afternoon lulls before the overnight redeye departures cause activity to pick up again. Still, with about 19-20 hours of daily activity, LAX T-4 should be able to handle perhaps 120-130 departures from those 13 gates. Some of the US redeyes to PHL and CLT depart quite late - even later than the second LAX-DFW at 1:00 am or so.
The good news for new AA at LAX are the four TBIT gates that AA will have on a preferential use basis. MAH4546 has said that perhaps AA moves all of its widebody flights to the new TBIT when those gates become available, which should help the T-4 congestion. Based on the current schedule, that would include not only the 777 TPAC flights but also the 777s and 763s to MIA and DFW.
Lastly, the new A321Ts that will soon replace the 762s on the JFK transcons should be able to be turned much faster than the current 762s. Just 102 passengers and probably little or no cargo. The current 762s to/from JFK appear to occupy gates for about two hours between their arrival and pushback, and that's inefficient. On the flipside, frequency goes up from 9 today to 13 by June.
