Originally Posted by
Mr Mac
Quick question to the Forum re BA utilization of a/c. Currently I am in Cape Town airport awaiting to start trip home, and there are 2 747 and a 777 a/c here from BA all presumably awaiting evening returns to UK. I cannot believe it can be economic to have this amount of metal sat here for hours each day. I am bound home via DXB as have meeting there (and nolonger fly BA anyway) but is there enough traffic ex UK for this amount of a/c ?
This one comes up from time to time, it is economic, and you may have noticed that BA are making substantially more profit than the carrier based in DXB, so possibly they understand something.
The issue is the same elsewhere in the world with north-south long haul flights of about 9-12 hours in the same time zone, such as USA to Argentina/Chile. Running a daylight flight on such routes just does not pick up the business, especially premium. It becomes difficult or impossible to have any onward connections, either air or surface, at either end of the route, and you become restricted to just the local O&D market, which just doesn't cut it compared to the overnights.
Regarding cost, a very significant proportion of an aircraft operating cost is flying hours based, crew, maintenance, fuel, even a proportion of the airframe depreciation. The net impact of having an aircraft standing for some hours is nothing like you might imagine, and more than offset by the commercial advantage.
If you did do a CPT-LHR daylight flight, then for it to leave after an adequate turnround from the southbound overnight, by the time it got to LHR it would be too late to do another long haul turnround to leave LHR that evening, so it would be on the ground until the next morning anyway. So what's the point ?
I have taken the daylight flight JFK to LHR. Depart at 1000 means being in JFK shortly after 0830 so depart Manhattan at 0730. An early start therefore. LHR arrival at 2130, bags etc and out by 2230, in Central London after 2300. That's unreliable for even trains to the outer suburbs. You end up getting to bed after midnight and are expected back in your Central London office, 5 hours out of your time zone, for 0900 "because you didn't take the red eye". No wonder it's the lightest load of the day on JFK-LHR. And no wonder I feel zonked.