Two flights to same destination: Scheduling how far apart?

English Boards Community Support
#1

I’ve looked through the forums but couldn’t find a definite answer.

I am operating three hub waves per day (1st East, 2nd West, 3rd East). I now have some flights that work very well and receive lots of booking. Because I would like to stick to one aircraft type to save on fleet costs, I don’t want to simply upgrade the size of the aircraft but would like to schedule additional flights to those well-performing destinations. If the flights are eastbound, I can add one during the respective other hub wave.

However, since I only have one daily westbound wave, I am wondering how far apart I should be scheduling westbound flights to the same destinations. I’ve read somewhere that 5 minutes apart is probably not a good idea but is there a duration after which this booking penalty decreases or completely disappears (e.g., 30 minutes or so)?

TLDR: How close together/far apart should you schedule flights to the same destination without being penalized too strongly by the booking system?

Thank you in advance!

#2

What penalty do you refer to?

#3

For the booking system itself it doesn’t matter if you have 12 flights all departing at the same time or spaced 2 hours apart. Of course, when considering connections it often is better to space your flights equally throughout the day. And scheduling all your flights at the same time might give you problems with the available slots for example. But as for the number of bookings you receive there is no penalty as far as I know.

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#4

I was under the impression that there would be some kind of reduction in the load factor/ demand if you have two or more flights to the same destination departing too close to each other.

But good to know that this may not be the case!

#5

if you operate two flights at about the same time, you run the risk of not having either aircraft to capacity. it’s only really useful on “trunk routes” with very high demand like SIN-KUL, where theoretically both aircraft would fill up.
Furthermore, for most “legacy” airlines in “older” servers most of these “trunk routes” are served every half hour, but usually no more unless it’s a one-off flight trying to fill up a widebody’s schedule. So basically, for “regular” daily operations it’s 0000, 0030, 0100, and so on (dep. times) but not more - just to take into consideration… some of these date 14 years.

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#6

and if they want more capacity on those routes, they just swap the aircraft type for something bigger. They usually start with all the services being operated by something like an E190, and work their way up the ladder, swapping for bigger aircraft (usually 320 or 737 families) before eventually swapping all flights for widebodies (commonly 330s due to their relatively-short range compared to other widebodies). Sometimes it’s good to operate 4x daily on E-jets than a once-daily or few times-weekly widebody. It’s all about filling the flight and catching connections

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#7

There is no penalty. Also this story about 30 minutes minimum space makes no sense at all. Regarding connections, it is good to have many flights within your waves. But on a trunk route like SIN KUL, you could schedule flights every minute and would fill all planes.

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#8

That makes sense. Thank you!

#9

you better check, how many transit passengers you have for that flight which one you would like to add additional. If you have not many transit passengers probably passengers take flight from your HUB to final destination.
But you if you have good transit passengers it is better to add one more feet.