Originally Posted by
Bearcat
1.5 a330s is the magic figure required for west coast ops so a lot of the speculation re 757s could be spot on.
Where does this "magic figure" come from?
It seems to me that if SFO is combined with a shorter route (I'll take JFK as an example) it could potentially be done with a single extra aircraft (plus less ground time).
Let's take EI 105/104, currently occupying one aircraft:
EI 105 DUB 1045 - 1320 JFK
EI 104 JFK 1740 - 0525* DUB
We'll add one more aircraft and borrow the timings from the old DUB-SFO operation I was asking about the other day.
So the first aircraft does:
Monday:
EI 105 DUB 1045 - 1320 JFK
EI 104 JFK 1740 -
Tuesday
- 0525 DUB
EI 147 DUB 0950 - 1250 SFO
EI 146 SFO 1500 -
Wednesday
- 0915 DUB
EI 105 DUB 1045 - 1320 JFK
EI 104 JFK 1740 ...
and so on.
The second aircraft does the same but 24 hours later (DUB-JFK on Tues, DUB-SFO on Wed,...).
Of course you can move the SFO schedule to partially even out the ground time before and after the SFO rotation, but in principle, by "borrowing" some of the ground time from an existing aircraft, it seems to me that it should be possible to add an SFO route with a single additional aircraft.
Result: with two aircraft you have the daily EI104/105 JFK and (if you want it) a daily SFO. More likely would be a less-than-daily SFO and some extra frequencies elsewhere.