Planes May Fly Longer

[cavalier]

Lets discuss bonii in the merit/bonus thread. Thanks

-Darth

At least you have a fitting avatar Bill. 😛

 

[mweiss]

It doesn't necessarily save a dime - in fact it might cost a little money.

True enough, Jim. 'Course, just to make it even more complicated, your scenario might not cost anything more, but may in fact save money. 🙂

After all, what you describe requires the addition of ASMs, since there are more Ms being flown by the Ss. 😉 So, you could park planes, keep the same ASMs, and save money due to reduced wear and tear, maintenance, staffing, etc.

And to Cav, yup, rolling a hub requires fewer people, which can translate to job loss. Nonetheless, at some point you have to decide not between keeping 100% or 95% of your employees, but rather between keeping 95% or 0% of your employees. It hurts like hell for the 5%, of course. But it still looks like the lesser of the evils.

 

[BoeingBoy]

mweiss,

You are of course correct. The rolling hub can be used to fly the same number of ASM's with fewer planes, gates, and people, meaning lower CASM's. It just seemed somewhat foolish to use it that way to me - you have to get out of the leases on the planes and gates and incur the cost of severence when you furlough more people.

It seems much more efficient to make productive use of the extra ASM's generated with the same assets to "grow" the airline - either by adding more flights thru the hubs or doing more point-to-point.

Course, that's just me.....

Jim

 

[RowUnderDCA]

I suspect the real reluctance with announcing and implementing a rolling hub is the number of gates that will apparently be surplused. Even if U can just hold on to them, it will be politically difficult to 'hog' them and there will be pressure to give up some amount of control. It seems to me that in order to justify the use of the same number of gates, you have to have more aircraft, right? Yes, I do believe it's bad karma to run an airline with a monopoly mind set, and I believe that it's this attitude that is at the heart of U's problems. I'm just perceiving and surmising that that's part of the hold up.

 

[ITRADE]

Well, the answer there is to add a few extra flights to cover the gates - enough to justify them being considered "in use."

 

[SVQLBA]

Add to the increased productivity of the airplanes and employees, you also have the added benefit of reducing your CASM.....which is all the rage in CCY. 🙂

Hope that helps

If it doesn't eliminate jobs exactly why does it save a dime other than fuel wear and tear etc? Or, does it eliminate jobs?

Cav:

Even if you eliminate no jobs, and you don't increase total flying (though you certainly can use the efficiencie to do that), you can get savings in a number of ways

-- Decrease the use of part-time and over-time to meet the peaks, both above and below wing
-- Reduce the number of gates used (though you do need to exit a lease agreement or sell them to get the benefit)
-- Fewer missed connects (from slightly longer conect times)
-- Less bag running -- connecting bags need a high amount of touch labor when cx times are short -- if it's a one hour connect they can be sent thru the bag system, much more manpower efficient
-- You can schedule your pilots and flight crew more efficiently. How many times have you had to wait for cockpit or cabin crew? They are scheduled to connect from aircraft to aircraft to get up productivity because the aircraft sit around in peaked hubs, but just as passngers miss-connect, so do crew -- but the aircraft have to wait for them. With quicker turns, there are more time when cockpit or cabin crew can be scheduled with the aircraft. Fewer delays, and also some (difficult to quantify) benefits on the Mx and service side (they really get to know the equipment, what's just a rattle vs an Mx issue etc.) Once you starting calling on reserve crew expenses rack up quickly, so I expect this become a sizable chunk of savings

Overall, you start to create a "virtuous" circle of benefits: -> smoother aircraft ops -> smoother above and below wing ops -> smoother scheduling of all staff groups -> service and cost benefits -> invest in growth or take to bottom line.

 

[ktflyhome]

SVQLBA: I have literally, many times, got off a plane at the end of B concourse in PHL, walked to the end of C concourse (plane changes). Did a PHL turn. Come back at the end of C and walk to the end of B and get back on the same plane. This happened once in BWI. Two planes parked sided by side. Crews from both planes swapped airplanes. Both crews did a BWI turn came back and swapped planes again. We all had to laugh. This happens all the time. We will do six legs a day, and ever other turn we have an a/c change. I would much rather stay with the same plane all day. <_<

 

[BoeingBoy]

For anyone interested, here is a graphical depiction of the change in traffic flow at a rolled hub. Pay particular attention to AMR's operation at DFW, since they have been the most aggressive at attacking the hub problem.

**This is an Adobe PDF document - Adobe Acrobat required.

Chart

Jim

 

[ITRADE]

Definately depeaking.

 

[BoeingBoy]

One thing that has not come up in this thread yet is the concept of delinking hubs, which works well with depeaking. Not surprisingly, AMR was an early adaptor of this.

Delinking means scheduling the aircraft routing so that a given plane will not pass thru multiple hubs in the same day. For our operation, it would mean not having a plane fly BUF-PHL-MCO-CLT-GSO-PIT-ALB (just an example, I don't know if a plane is really scheduled that way). Instead it would be scheduled something like BUF-PHL-MCO-PHL-ORF-PHL-ALB. In effect, each hub would have it's own fleet of planes that only went in and out of that hub during a given day.

What is the advantage? By segregating the hubs, you prevent delays at one hub from spilling over to other hubs. If PHL is running 2 hour delays in the first example above, the plane will be lucky to be only 1 hour behind getting to CLT. That means either missed connections or other flights being delayed waiting on those connections. You've either got upset passengers or more planes sitting on the ground longer instead of flying.

However, in the second example above the plane would return to PHL where presumably the other flights would be still running late also. Thus, a better chance of the passengers making their connections without the other planes having to sit and wait.

Obviously, this only helps when the hub is running behind. If a spoke city is experiencing delays, or a plane is delayed for maintenance problems or whatever, this will not help. But used in conjunction with depeaking the hub, it provides another increment of efficiency.

Jim

 

[ITRADE]

I like the idea of doing out and backs to the extent that it isolates delays to a particular hub. On the other hand, does it create delays in that the out and back must be built to ensure that there is some type of flight timing to match either 1) the current flight "banks" or 2) the extented depeaked banks.

For example, flight arriving from Buffalo to Philadelphia and then travels to Raleigh and back may wind up having times where the connections do not work at all well for purposes of connecting passengers to other flights.

 

[BoeingBoy]

ITRADE,

You are absolutely right that there are some tradeoffs that must be considered. Just like when doing the depeaking, planning must be carefully done. Ideally, you would want the last flights leaving from the (lowered) peaks to fly to the nearer spoke cities and the earlier departures going the furtherest, but it is a very complex arrangement that has to be put together carefully. And there will be situations where it just won't work - a perfect example being PHL-CLT service.

Jim

 

[BoeingBoy]

I should have added (or elaborated?) that you do the best you can. Just as depeaking doesn't result in an even flow of traffic throughout the day but lower peaks and higher valleys, delinking doesn't mean that you never route a plane to pass thru multiple hubs - you just try to minimize it to the extent possible.

 

[ITRADE]

Well, I think the intra hub flying and "focus city" flying is a different bird all together.

There are, what, 15 or so flights a day from PHL to CLT and from places like BOS to PHL.

 

[BoeingBoy]

ITRADE,

You've undoubtedly got a better handle on the number of flights between hubs or focus cities to hubs than I do - I usually only worry about what I'm flying.

In theory, most of the intrahub flights carry passengers going between those cities - with the obvious exception of international connections. In practice, I just don't know - if I'm flying PHL-CLT I know how many passengers but not their final destination.

Jim