How should I organize my flight schedule to maximize the number of transferring passengers?
Hi,
make sure your flights from the north connect to southbound flights. And flights from the west should connect to eastbound flights. You can replace the wind directions by regions. My Egyptian airline for example connects European airports to airports in the Middle East.
Transfer times should be as short as possible, but not less than the minimum transfer time that is announced on the airport page of your hub.
The "blocks" you see on your flight schedule include the turnover time. In other words, the block stops when your airplane is ready to depart for its next flight. Depending on the size of your plane, and the size of the airport, your passengers have already left the plane half an hour or an hour before the plane is ready for its next flight. You can check the exact turnover time if you use the aircraft performance tool.
Jan
Thank you
or the actual schedule as the arrival time (importantfor slot availability) is displayed in scheduling mode
How do departure/arrival waves work and is it a good idea?
every airport has a minimum transfer time (you find it on the airport information screen).
if you schedule all your aircraft to arrive at time x and have them depart at x+minimun transfer time, all pax from the arriving flights can connect to all departing flights with a short connection time.
pros: many available connections and thus usually a higher seat load factor
cons: by focusing take offs and landings at small time frames, slot availability becomes a problem quickly. also, aircraft utilization is lower as your aircrafts usually have to stand around and wait somewhere to meet the waves. and aircrafts obly make money when flying.
Let's say you decide for 8 am as your wave time. This means flights will be departing between 8 am and 9 am.
If you have 1 hour transfer time, flights will need to arrive before 7 am.
As mentioned, aircraft utilization will be a problem.
I usually combine waves with non-waived. On trunk routes I do no waives, frequency matters. (But of course, flights on trunk routes are also departing during wave times)
On smaller airports I schedule them into wave times.
I try to combine "wave flights" with "trunk flights", to have quite good aircraft utilization.
Also if you fly within a bigger country, you can find many airports that can support direct flights without passing through hub, and you use these flights to fill up your planes' schedule.