Originally Posted by
sbm12
As for CO running a more optimistic schedule I haven't seen much evidence of less schedule padding or tighter turns than the other airlines. I'm pretty sure they even block the westbounds longer in the winter to account for it to some extent. And with many planes doing turns and "getting back" the time after a delayed outbound the overall impact on downline flights should be pretty minimal. Of course, if you have some evidence to support the claim I'd love to see it.
Check out CO's block times for transcons vs. UA's.
Compare EWR-SFO to JFK-SFO for example, and you'll see that UA's block times have more padding.
Now of course you may say that's apples to oranges because ground delays or other issues at JFK may differ than CO's.
Then, compare say EWR-SFO on CO to say IAD-SFO on UA. You'll see the block times are very similar, which is interesting, since IAD is not capacity constrained like EWR is, so you'd expect little to no ground delays at IAD. Plus the flight out of IAD is shorter.
Also, look at some of the Euro turns you see on CO vs. UA. Take GVA for example -- EWR-GVA-EWR sits for 95 minutes in GVA. UA's IAD-GVA-IAD sits for 4 hours. Assuming it takes about 45 minutes to board, say 20-25 minutes to offload, and then you need time to clean and cater, that really doesn't leave CO much cushion for problems on a flight like that.
Last night, IAD-GVA took a delay of over 3 hours. The return left 30 minutes late as a result and is due in on time, despite the headwinds.
Finally, look at CO's crew bases (hubs only) vs. UA, DL, and AA, which have crew bases in significant outstations or regions. This gives those carriers a lot more ability to recover in case of a time-out or delay issue, while CO may need to hold for crew to arrive or reposition new crew to recover from an issue.
I think it's this sort of padding and slack in the system which is why UA outperforms CO in on time performance, despite CO's newer feet advantage.