Originally Posted by
caaardiff
The economics of operating 1x 325+ seat aircraft doing 2 short haul flights a day on high demand routes with 2 sets of crew must work out better than utilising 2x 189 doing 2 flights per day with 4 sets of crews. As a holiday company you also need to look at whats going on in resort. It's TUI Holidays that needs the flights, not TUI Airways. So one set of transfers, check-in at Airport and Hotels, reps etc etc.
Additionally, it probably suits TUI to use a 787 on a short-haul hop in between long-haul flights as that aircraft would otherwise be sat on the ground and frees up a 737/757 for use on another short-haul route. See also BA/IB using widebodies on LHR-MAD or even EI using A330's DUB-Europe - the usage in this manner is in between long-haul sectors and meets a need to provide more capacity than a single narrowbody and as an alternative to doubling up flights.
I agree that the use of a widebody on a short-haul route doesn't make sense on the face of it and it makes no sense to buy and use an aircraft as capable (and expensive when new) as the 787 in that way all the time. However, when the bigger picture is taken into account you can see why TUI do it and why they're not alone in that regard.