With some exceptions (LGW, FCO, MUC to name a few), it appears US has instituted schedule changes for many of the Europe flights out of PHL this summer such that they will be leaving much earlier than they have historically. For example, the CDG flight (which currently leaves at 8:20 p.m.) will start leaving at 6:15 p.m. this summer. The MAD flight (which currently leaves at 8:15 p.m.) will begin leaving at 6:00 p.m.; BCN will be leaving at 5:40 p.m. (last year it left around 8:00 p.m.); the new MXP service will leave at 4:10 p.m.! I don't recall such significant seasonal changes in departure times in the past (unless they have been adding a second daily as they used to on the CDG route in the past -- which does not appear to be the case this summer). Although I suspect the addition of new and return of seasonal routes may have something to do with it (i.e. gate capacity in A-West), I am curious why many of the flight schedules are being moved up to depart so early in the evening (or late afternoon in many cases)?

I've been wondering the same thing. PHL-FRA currently leaves @ 4:10 PM and gets you into Germany before 6 AM most days. That may make sense for some businesspeople, but for me it's just too frickin' early!! :mad:

When my family went to FRA a few weeks ago, we flew EWR-CLT-FRA to better accommodate our toddler's sleep schedule. No PHL was an added bonus.

Just think of the short lines in passport control! :D

OTOH, how early do you have to get there to hit the booze in the envoy lounge?

A friend and I are booked on DL from ATL to DUS this June. Original departure time was 8:15 p.m. but today we found out it has been changed to 4:10 p.m.

I am all for it. Spead out the banks. Leaving at 8pm half the time you would sit on the tarmac for 40 mins waiting to take off.

I am all for it. Spead out the banks. Leaving at 8pm half the time you would sit on the tarmac for 40 mins waiting to take off.

I Assume that US tries to get flights out on time. In particular from PHL, which, as we all know, is notorious for severe delays late afternoon and early evenings. I'm for it too.

By the way, that 40 mins is in addition to the 45 minutes tarmac time upon arrival, trying to catch your flight to Europe connecting in PHL .

I have no connection with the airline industry other than as self loading freight so I may be wide of the mark here.

However European airspace is a mess in that there is no effective central control because of the number of countries involved. Prior to a flight departing it is my laymans understanding that it has to be cleared by all the various ATC authorities through to its final destination.

Large swathes of airspace are blocked to civilian traffic because of various countries demanding military airspace for training and so called security purposes. This leads to capacity issues at peak times and a refusal to give advance clearance to departing flights from other countries.

The majority of people in Euope who vacation in the summer months do short haul (ie intra european trips) and fly charter rather than scheduled flights, and the demand for airspace from these charters increases tremendously during the high season. Unlike the USA most charter flights depart and arrive during the night/early morning.

I suspect therefore that the scheduled Trans Atlantic carriers are trying to make their schedules fit into this unholy mess in order to keep their punctuality ratings etc within acceptability limits.

I may be way of base here but its just my thoughts :D

The four pm departure is also pretty good for tourists. This means you're landing in the UK at midnight departure time (a little later farther east). I can't sleep on the plane so I just "stay up late" crash at the hotel for the morning, and be up again in time for lunch rested.

I'd love to fly a late evening departure, but I could only do it in J.

Large swathes of airspace are blocked to civilian traffic because of various countries demanding military airspace for training and so called security purposes. This leads to capacity issues at peak times and a refusal to give advance clearance to departing flights from other countries.


Maybe, but I don't recall having to leave early like this on a widespread basis before the end of the Cold War, when there was a ton more mil traffic than there is today.

Maybe landing fees are cheapest in the early AM?

For me the early arrival sucks -- landing at 6am means 9pm Pacific. No chance of getting an arrival that early in any hotel without paying the nightly rate. Arriving at 10am (when the AMS flight used to arrive), you could often talk your way into a room by noon.

*DUPLICATE*

The four pm departure is also pretty good for tourists. This means you're landing in the UK at midnight departure time (a little later farther east). I can't sleep on the plane so I just "stay up late" crash at the hotel for the morning, and be up again in time for lunch rested.

I'd love to fly a late evening departure, but I could only do it in J.

This is exactly how I feel. The earlier dep. times are great for me.

US will be feeding west coast (HP) folks to these international flights. A 6am - 10am west coast departure will arrive PHL in time to connect to these flights with minimal layover times as compared to a UA SFO/LAX flight.

This is a bummer if you're originating from PHL. What's great about the later departure is that you can get in a whole day of work before heading to the airport. 4pm departure means leaving mid-day to get there in time for check-in, security, drinking in Envoy Lounge, boarding, etc.

It worked really well to work all day, go straight to the airport, board, eat, sleep and then arrive at the start of a new day.

Since the return flights arrive basically the same time as before, between 2:00 to 4:00 pm, leaving early also means having to pay an extra day of parking for me.

I think the times listed now are still universal times-- by this I mean that they don't take into account the time going ahead.

So the effect may not be as big as you think.

It just seems like I noticed this other years, and that was part of the answer-- they have to be careful because every country doesn't change their summer clocks at the same time, so they keep things on the universal clock time for a while.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is that the times you are looking at may be Eastern Standard time, even for the summer dates, and when we go to Eastern Daylight Time, there may be an hour of shift built in there.

Cheers!

However European airspace is a mess in that there is no effective central control because of the number of countries involved. Prior to a flight departing it is my laymans understanding that it has to be cleared by all the various ATC authorities through to its final destination.

Well not so really. It is called Eurocontrol and is situated in Brussels and controls the airspace over Europe very effectively. If you depart e.g from France and are heading fro the UK you need one single clearance from Eurocontrol. They take care of all flight planning, no matter the different countries. So it is actually a lot better than the situation in the Americas... :D

US will be feeding west coast (HP) folks to these international flights. A 6am - 10am west coast departure will arrive PHL in time to connect to these flights with minimal layover times as compared to a UA SFO/LAX flight.

This is probably the reason. Some transcon flights have been cut, most notably the later morning departures, so the earlier European flights allows one to take the morning transcon and have a reasonable connection time.

Part of it could be US may be loosing some overflow A-East gates when DL moves over to A (if they haven't already) and they have to space out the flights because of the increase # of European flights this summer.

Starting in May, US will have 17 transatlantic departures almost every night. I think Lisbon is the exception, it won't operate every day. US in PHL doesn't have the gates, or manpower to handle all of those flights simultaneously. TSA also doesn't have the manpower to handle 17 airplanes worth of people passing through security at the same time. Granted, many will be coming from connecting flights but the logistics still make it very difficult for them to handle. US only has 13 gates to work with as well. By trying to get all of the t/a flights out around the same time, you would have to increase the minimum connection times in order to get everyone processed.
Slot control in Europe is another issue, and they try to prevent all of the flights arriving from the US from arriving at the same time. Typically there are a lot more arrivals to Europe in the summer time because of added flights and they try to space them out a little bit to avoid congestion. This also enables people to make more connections on the Europe side as well.
You also have to take into account that some of the longer flights need an earlier departure from PHL in order to have ample ground time in Europe to make a turnaround so that they can have a decent arrival time in the U.S. so that connections can be made. So as not to overload customs in PHL, the arrival times have been staggered from 1:20 to 4:00. I'm sure many of you regulars have endured the horrendous lines at security trying to reclear to make your domestic connections. Think of those lines doubled if the flights all came in at the same time. :(
Hope this answers the original question! :)

Hope this answers the original question! :)

Thanks, GalleyWench! It does indeed. I made reference to the added summer Europe flights in my OP with the suspicion that the new additions may have something to do with it in concert with US's current gate capacity in A-West. Thanks, as always, for the helpful and informative information!

Galleywench rules!

Galleywench rules!

Amen to that!

And here I thought it was to avoid the 6PM thunderstorms in PHL during the summer that prevented the flights getting out on time.

Knew Galley Wench would have the answer. I've been in those long lines when all the flights come in. Staggering them makes a lot of sense. Why didn't someone think of it before. ^

It seems to be the same thing with leaving SFO. I remember last year leaving SFO at around 11am or there abouts. Now the first flight into CLT leaves SFO at 7am and the 2nd flight that gets into PHL leaves at 8am.

The other way is to leave SFO at 11pm, and get into CLT at 7am or something like that. Then you have to spend the whole day at CLT till that evening flight gets into LGW.

I dont think that is a good move to be honest. Who wants to get up at 4am to get a 7am flight? or 5am to get a 8am flight?

To be honest, I can see people moving over to UA as they have flights to London leaving in the afternoon!! Makes life more simple! :)

[QUOTE=GalleyWench]Starting in May, US will have 17 transatlantic departures almost every night. I think Lisbon is the exception, it won't operate every day. US in PHL doesn't have the gates, or manpower to handle all of those flights simultaneously.... US only has 13 gates to work with as well. By trying to get all of the t/a flights out around the same time, you would have to increase the minimum connection times in order to get everyone processed....
/QUOTE]

Actually there are fewer than 13 A-West gates available, since AF and LH use one each and later this year, BA will move 2 flights over to A-West, so there goes 3 gates. There are however, at various times, several international gates at A-East which are available - less desirable, but still there.

I have no connection with the airline industry other than as self loading freight so I may be wide of the mark here.

However European airspace is a mess in that there is no effective central control because of the number of countries involved. Prior to a flight departing it is my laymans understanding that it has to be cleared by all the various ATC authorities through to its final destination.

Large swathes of airspace are blocked to civilian traffic because of various countries demanding military airspace for training and so called security purposes. This leads to capacity issues at peak times and a refusal to give advance clearance to departing flights from other countries.

The majority of people in Euope who vacation in the summer months do short haul (ie intra european trips) and fly charter rather than scheduled flights, and the demand for airspace from these charters increases tremendously during the high season. Unlike the USA most charter flights depart and arrive during the night/early morning.

I suspect therefore that the scheduled Trans Atlantic carriers are trying to make their schedules fit into this unholy mess in order to keep their punctuality ratings etc within acceptability limits.

I may be way of base here but its just my thoughts :D

I'm sorry, but that's not quite true.
It is indeed correct that European people do fly a lot of Charter for holidays and these generally start/land in the very early morning or the very late night. This is due to the fact that tourism industry is still in an important position with only about 20% of the customers being individual travelers. With you in the states, this is completely different. European want the whole package delivered (being picked up at home or nearby, flight, transfer to the hotel, hotel, tours and the way back). These flight times use to give you an additional day at your destination in case you start early and return late.

But in Europe there is no mess with Air Traffic Security. It's highly regulatet and controled and as we have widely ranging agreements there is no need to request airspace at every countrys Control!

Changing the departures may be a point of competition lately. The arrival time and the prices on the one hand; on the other hand, I think they are trying to give more time to sleep. At least that is what LH is doing lately. They started by changing on board procedures to serve dinner earlier and give more time for a nights-rest. US is surely trying to feed their planes with people from the west coast to take advantage of the additional travelers on HP and therefore making connection times shorter and more convenient.

All in all I think it is a well thought thing, knowing that most of the travelers hate long layovers, especially after catching an red-eye or this awful flight from West to East coast.

At least in Frankfurt, arriving later is better due to less overcrowding of the Lounges and showers and the entire airport.
This seems to be the same in all major hub airports (CDG, FRA, AMS, MXP, LIS, ARN...) in Europe.

Many happy landings,

HamburAround