Originally Posted by
glofish
1. I have not seen any statistics, and i doubt we will ever read a trustworthy one, about the effective capacity increase of VLAs on the most frequently served airports
It's not hard to find evidence if you look.
Take Heathrow, for example. As is commonly known, the number of movements has barely changed over the last 10 years because it's up against the ATM limit.
But last year LHR handled 5 million more passengers than 2011, with nearly 7,000 fewer movements, representing an increase of almost 10% in the average number of passengers per flight.
Part of that increase is due to a modest rise in load factors, but it's mostly a result of a gradual increase in average capacity per movement (i.e. aircraft size), to which 30 additional A380 movements per day contribute significantly.