Originally Posted by
virginblue
Hmmm, not exactly brilliant aircraft utilisation, me thinks.
Anyone operating at LCY will tell you that you cover all your overheads and hopefully make some money with an aircraft there on one morning rotation and one evening rotation. If the route is short you can maybe get two worthwhile evening round trips.
The rest of the day you will hope to cover your direct costs if you can. 11 am is normally dead time financially. So it's not like the LCCs down the road at Stansted at all. It can be most cost effective to stand the aircraft down during the day.
You will notice there are not that many factory-new aircraft in use, where the need to recover high time-based leasing costs are paramount. VLM are the past masters at managing the cost balance here.