Originally Posted by
mrpickle
Just wondering, but can someone explain why the arrival times are 45 minutes after the departure times? I know there needs to be time for taxi and takeoff, but do they have to fly over the Pacific for a while to level off at 30 000 feet or something before coming in for landing? I don't get why there needs to be more than a 5-10 minute flight time. Can anyone who knows all about the properties of a comercial jet enlighten me?
Taxi time is the big driver here.
When United offered SNA-LAX (a similar distance, albeit on a prop), it was about an 8 minute flight, but by the time you taxi out and get to the runway (about 10 minutes when you account for safety demo, pushback, etc.) and taxi in (another 5-10 minutes), it adds up. With this flight, they likely need to take some manuevers to keep it out of the approach path for LAX, as planes coming into LAX are at about 5000 ft when they pass due south of downtown Los Angeles - navigating around the LAX airspace as this flight bisects that approach will likely add some extra minutes on as well.