If the minimum transfer time is 1.5 Hr's and I have precisely 90 minutes from Arrival time to Departure will that be sufficient to get some transfer pax or do i need the arrival time to be 90+ minutes to ensure pax can transfer. In other words min transfer + 1 minute is all that is needed.
On a similar vain what is best of these two options. Cram 10 returns a day onto a/c and get the service ratio as close to 100 percent as possible with no "white space" time on the ground. Or to try to get 4 return "waves with the min transfer respected and reduce a/c utilisation to closer to a 200% maintenance ratio but enable far better transfer pax possibilities? I can see the second method leads to higher costs and of course requires 25% more aircraft for the same total flights.
I assume that at the end of the day it is better to have a high percent of transfer pax that are then topped up with the direct traffic at your hub instead of just relying on the direct pax?
Famous quote in AS: IT DEPENDS.O
On new servers demand is high and you can schedule back to back.
On old servers you are better off with precise waves to build up transit flow, then add filler routes on other planes as your volume grows.
Same strategy applies to old server if a country opens up after a major bankruptcy, domestic demand is huge and you can schedule back to back.
On old servers I think it is better to start with old planes and schedule only wave times (e.g. 4 banks) your leases are cheap (often just 40,000 pr plane or less) so you can schedule more planes. While maintenance cost is high for older planes, if you schedule less flights, you will pay less in maintenance, it's the same approach Allegiant Air uses in the USA - fly cheap MD80's, but fly them not too much ... that way the cost of capital is low and maintenance is low. But you should start changing older planes for newer ones once you hit 100 million in the bank, to better up your ratings.
On new servers you can schedule back to back, demand is high and banks do not matter (but you should know what are your banks anyway), then as you grown and add money and planes you create more and more connections so banks really do not matter that much anyway at that point either, but in any case you should try to schedule as close to your banks as possible.
So again... it depends ... market conditions, competition, demand situation, current AGEX etc.