Originally Posted by
wiggy
+1
Airlines want tighter and tighter turns, both for reasons of aircraft utilisation and crew utilisation. A whole day’s trip, of say 4 sectors is predicated on minimum time on the ground (anything other than that is seen as being inefficient)...it is also not uncommon in some outfits to plan crew right up to the limits of maximum flight duty periods...there is no “fat” in the system.
Now in reality once the day start you get hit by slots, baggage offload, slow push backs, and almost right from the start of sector one the timings of the final sector of the day are a work of fiction...if it gets really bad you can be looking at replacing crew on the final sector because of duty limitations, and that in itself can build in a further delay.
The answer is to build in more fat (extra aircraft extra crew) ..but that costs....
Wiggy, in response to building more fat into the timetables, isn't that fat already there within the airline/atc/airport system? I.e., the destination airport of the final sector is not normally closed even if the flight is 1-2 hours late, so why not just schedule the flights to depart at a realistic time so people can plan their onward journeys? I suppose that the risk with that is you have an aircraft sitting on the ground, but if the flight departs, on average, say 30 minutes late, why not schedule the departure time 30 minutes later? That's what I don't understand.
I also agree with this being applicable to most airlines, and long-haul, but to me its exacerbated when short haul flights are delayed.