System Glitch?

English Boards General
1

Hi All,

I have accidentally bumped across what may be a way to operate more than one flight on the same slot - albeit temporarily.

Please consider the following scenario:

Aircraft 1: flies between AUH and DXB on 5 return flights a day (a total of 10 daily flights on the schedule). The aircraft is configured with 130 seats (92 ECONOMY).

Now, I see that my Economy Class is constantly fully booked and want to increase capacity for that class. I also decide, due to slot and financial constraints that I will operate the same 5 daily returns, but using an aircraft that has more economy class seats.

So, I order a new aircraft - Aircraft 2 - and configure this aircraft with 156 seats (138 ECONOMY).

I transfer the schedule from Aircraft 1 to Aircraft 2, and schedule a new destination on Aircraft 1.

Now, here's the technical bit:

Aircraft 1 still has 3 days of flights on the ORS, which will be operated until cancelled. The new schedule appears on the ORS after these flights are completed.

Aircraft 2's schedule has not been activited. I activited it WITHOUTH the 3 day delay, so those flights appear on the ORS again.

So, Flight Number 238 etc could now be operated by 2 aircraft at the same time, but only for around 2 days.

You can see the overlap in the picture below (apologies for the second picture - please look right down the bottom for the overlapped flights).

Has any one come across this before? Does it actually work? Is it legal? Are there any financial implications?

I just want to add a note that I saw this 2 days ago when I was reshuffling some schedules and seats on my 777s, and again today when doing the same on my 739s. I have not use this for any illegal or unfair financial gain (Activating flights within 24 hours means that they only go through 1 demand cycle are are often not even half full), which is also why I am sharing it on the forums. I suppose the financial gain of this happening once a month or so is extremely neglible, but given the right amount of thought and planning, this could be exploited.

I intently look forward to reading your responses.

Saad

2

Your plane won’t be in the right position, so the next flight will be cancelled. You’ll have to manually cancel the new (or old) flights to resolve the overlapping schedules. It’s a pain.

Edit: you know, it generally helps if you read a post before hitting reply. I’m thinking of a completely different scenario.

3

At max, it would need one transfer flight on the old aircraft.

But my concern is more to do with slot usage.

4

Yeah, I was editing to say that I’m talking out of a lower oriface while you replied.

Slots only matter when you’re building a schedule. Once the schedule gets passed to the ORS, the only concern is that a plane is at the departure airport at the scheduled time. The ORS doesn’t check for slot availability either, otherwise we’d have to consider slots for transfer flights.

5

I was under the impression that when it comes to existing flights that even if you hit activate schedule it still effectively has a 3 day delay for flights already booked on another aircraft.

6

G

I was under the impression that when it comes to existing flights that even if you hit activate schedule it still effectively has a 3 day delay for flights already booked on another aircraft.

Good point. I have noticed a delay, but not of 3 days.