Originally Posted by
bniu
Schedule padding can be a double edged sword, pad too much and you will reduce your utilization of your planes. In my transcon trips westbound, I usually assume 7 hours for the flight anyways. 1 hour every 500 miles plus 1 hour westbound, minus 1 hour eastbound
True, but on United's p.s. service (the original topic of discussion), there's probably room for a lot more padding. You're not going to get an extra turn out of the aircraft by decreasing block time, nor are you
not going to get your 2 (maybe 3?) segments per day by increasing block time.
It's probably more a factor in aircraft running short segments, and I'm sure the scheduling system can figure out how much padding they can get away with before it starts to affect aircraft utilization.