New ATC Delay Program

[PITbull]

I hope this illustrates the value of Pittsburgh to Tempe. There was a logical reason to have two hubs in Pennsylvania. When you put all the eggs in one basket, you better hope you don't drop it and break them all. Pittsburgh and Philadelphia once had a symbiotic relationship. Too bad those days are over.

Enjoy the ATC delays on top of everything else in PHL, you bunch of geniuses.

Ditto! B)

 

[foreright]

How about getting rid of the 3000 plus friggin rjs flyinhg in this country. They are expensive, extremely uncomfortable, and clog the system up. Bigger is better!!!!

 

[Travels2mch]

Luck of the draw, I guess.

Dorf

Maybe....I hope I didn't just jinx myself for next week!!

 

[TravelGirl21]

please explain to me that with this atac delay why??????
would you have a connection time into phlly with only 1 hr for an international conx no less,,,

this will surely piss the pax off when they miss their conx to europe and can't get there for days,,,,


bring back pit for euro conx less hassle less pissed off paxs ....

 

[MarkMyWords]

Actually it hasn't been bad at all and I've been flying in and out of there 6-8 times a month. I had a problem once in a snow storm getting into ORD from another city, so they put me on DL throough CVG and did OK. Have had a couple 30-45 minute delays at ORD, but ironically they usually were when I was flying US and it involved an inbound PHL flight. It's not perfect, but still much better than PHL. And you don't pull out and sit for an hour waiting to take off.

I do like connecting through CLT, but the travel time is so much longer when traveling to the midwest and west (and many times facing an RJ for a 2-3 hour flight). Going through ORD is much faster and lots of options from there on UA. Just makes more sense.

My experiences with ORD have been much worse. I have seen ORD go from Zero delays to 240 minutes in the matter of an hour or two. One difference in what happens in ATC events like weather is that the more slots you have, the greater the chances are of improving delay times through selective cancellations or slot swapping. Since UA and AA have the majority of slots in ORD, they are able to improve the performance of some flights by slot swapping. Where US has a smaller number of flights and could only improve their slot by cancelling a flight or bulking out the delay on another flight. The same holds true for US in PHL. Since we control the largest number of slots, we are able to improve slot times by selectively cancelling flights or swapping slots.

 

[MarkMyWords]

bring back pit for euro conx less hassle less pissed off paxs ....

Let me just give you a few figures to show why PHL is a better gateway to Europe then PIT. Today, if the figures I have are correct, we will board 833 local PHL customers to Europe. Destinations such as DUB, LGW, and CDG each have over 85 customers boarding that are PHL locals. Destinations such as MXP, BCN, VCE, MUC, AMS, MAD, FCO, MAN, FRA and SNN all have over 45 customers originiating their travel from PHL. There are only 2 flights that are showing less then 30 customers originiating their travel from PHL and that is GLA and ARN.

In comparison, today we are showing 134 customer traveling from PIT to PHL to connect to the European flights. If we were to move the European gateway from PHL to PIT, would we ever have local boardings comparable to PHL? No. Where would all those PHL to Europe customers go? With the 4 flights we now have from PHL-PIT between 1pm and 6pm, there are only 500 seats offered in the market. So, should we upgrade the service to offer 757 from PHL-PIT every half hour to accomodate the international traffic? Then what would happen to the local PHL-PIT traffic? Where would they go? How many of the international customers would we lose to CO out of EWR, or DL, AA or any international carrier out of JFK?

PHL makse sense as the international gateway to Europe. Do I agree with the min conx time to the European flights, absolutely not. Min conx time should be 90 min - 2 hours, but you have to stay competitive with what other airlines are offering.

 

[exB717Flyer]

I find it amusing when people bash the airlines for stupidly scheduling so many flights at the same time. Does anybody know why they do it? I'll help: it's because the customer wants more choice of flights and short connection times. Airlines are only responding to customer demand. Any changes to the status quo are difficult because the competition must do the same. The FAA forced AA and UA to make adjustments at ORD but that hasn't happened so evenly elsewhere.

It's also a fact that in order for a connection hub to be successful it must also be a strong O&D market. Like everyone else I love flying through PIT but it's O&D is weaker than PHL and USA is responding to that. STL used to be a connection hub for TWA that was 60% through and 40% O&D. Now it's a ghost town. CVG has also been thoroughly downsized by Delta mainline. The hub and spoke system is here to stay for the Legacies so it just has to be worked as best as possible.

 

[hp_fa]

With varying degrees of enthusiasim, I agree with the last two posts.

 

[tadjr]

PHL makse sense as the international gateway to Europe. Do I agree with the min conx time to the European flights, absolutely not. Min conx time should be 90 min - 2 hours, but you have to stay competitive with what other airlines are offering.

Not sure about other cities, but after several years of flight creep, we finally have a flight that gives most of our international conx about 90 mins to 2 hours to conx so a little ATC and we're still ok. It used to leave at 415, then it went to 430 and last year it was 445 (which arrived in PHL with many 50 minute conx). It is now back to 355 and is great. Of course, when you are taking 3 hour delays it doesnt help much, but its still a better shot than the 445 departure was.
I know marketing has to be competitive, but with the past several years of flight histories, they ought to be able to see that X number of days we misconx customers from UUU to PHL because of ATC and schedule the flight earlier the next year. Almost everything was 0'd out until early this week and some places (like Germany for the World Cup) were not good for most of the week. Its not good customer service to knowingly offer a shorter time for conx than was available for actual conx last year just to get them booked. We end up getting more bad PR (lose your bags on the way in due TSA get an extra couple days on the way back due ATC!) from trying to squeeze short conx to be competitive than if we just offered something reasonable in the first place and the customers "Had A Nice Experience With US!"

 

[Heinrich]

Well, this is way over my head just being a PAX, however, I am an IT professional and I see lots of 'resistance to change' as a normal part of organizational change/application change. I can't tell if the tone of this thread is 'resistance to change' or if the new program might actaully be good. The slideshow makes it look good but I don't trust it totally either.

 

[767jetz]

How about getting rid of the 3000 plus friggin rjs flyinhg in this country. They are expensive, extremely uncomfortable, and clog the system up. Bigger is better!!!!

My thoughts exactly. Airports like LGA should be slot controlled. There is just not enough real estate or airspace to accomodate unlimited flights in and out.

This new system is unacceptable. With all the delays there is no room for all the aircraft in LGA. Waited 45 minutes just to get off the gate, and another 90 to Takeoff. On return, we waited for 75 minutes for a gate to open because it was occupied and no room to push the outbound off our gate.

FUBAR

 

[700UW]

LGA is slot controlled.

 

[luvthe9]

As long as U get off UR brakes and roll 10 feet !

Not true, there are ways!!!!!!!!!

 

[USCREW]

Not true, there are ways!!!!!!!!!

How?

 

[phasersonstun2]

Why would we need Customs to clear the airplane if flights are pre-cleared out of BDA?

I could be wrong but I don't think the 767 does BDA. Usually the Airbii family does the BDA stuff.