So I was thinking about what is the better way of scheduling a maintenance period for AC and about the positioning of AC.
It seems to me that the obvious way is to just have the maintenance done at the hub overnight and have the AC do several return flights before having to come back at the hub for the night.
But then there is also the option of having the last flight of the day being an outbound flight to an outstation and have the aircraft spend 3-4 hours (enough for maintenance) there before flying back to the hub early in the morning. I seem to be doing this more often but I am also not really looking to create waves (i.e. a morning wave) past a certain scale of the airline and rather focus on utilization.
So which do you use and why?
I do maintenance to fit my intended schedule, not schedule to fit the maintenance. And I always do waves, even with 3000+ aircraft. Most big hubs no longer have tight waves, but they still do have waves. new destinations are scheduled to roughly fit current waves. Fully booked existing destinations may go to wave + offset or even off-wave times if waves and wave+offset times are already scheduled and full.
I usually schedule with waves but in some occasions I just want to grab a big enough piece and then I just do random scheduling. For example i can add unlimited capacity in China and it will still be filled. In these cases I prefer scheduling as quickly as possible so that I can grab enough of the market before a competitor takes it. When an airport is at under 10% slots it is almost impossible to schedule to waves.
Anyways my maintenance is usually done to fit the schedule and I usually have two 2 hour maintenance slots preferably not at my hub so that the flight can better fit to waves. Unlike the real world maintenance in AS can be done at the remotest places possible.
I am a single wave person. I do have wave in one particular hour in the morning. It could be 6, 7, or even 8. But none of my aircraft is doing maintenance in my hub. They will do maintenance in the airport where they will perform the first flight of the day to my hub, to connect to the waves. Therefore, I usually leave 00.00 to 04.00 empty from flying unless necessary, or I just want to reduce that maintenance ratio to 100%.