Originally Posted by
strawdan
My question is this one - I notice that some routes involve the aircraft being parked at the destination for what seems like a long time when it could be earning revenue. Examples include LHR-JNB - the outbound arrives into JNB at 06.55 yet doesn't return until 20.25 that evening - this seems like a long time (13.5 hours) to be sat not earning any revenue and means that effectively the aircraft is doing 22 hours flying but spends 35.5 hours servicing the route.
Average airline fleet utilization is only around 14 hours per day or so (Air New Zealand widebodies were historically near the top end, due to long double flying sectors, such as AKL-LAX-LHR).
Even though a plane may sit in HKG or JNB for a number of hours, the plane will arrive back at Heathrow ready to fly across the Atlantic within a couple of hours, adding up to a higher than average number of hours in the air the following flying day. On its flight back, the plane will carry a higher-yielding mix of passengers who prefer to fly at night, after bathing in the sun for a half day, so in the end, it's often more profitable to wait for when the bigger bucks want to fly.
Look up the routings for specific tail numbers at
thebasource.com. You’ll see that planes aren’t assigned to specific markets. They fly all over the planet, but no airline keeps its planes in the air 24/7.
JAL is changing its schedule for BOS this fall, where the plane will sit there for 17 hours or so. But when it arrives back at NRT, its passengers will be able to connect to 15 destinations immediately, rather than just the 7 they may do so now. Sometimes leaving a plane sit somewhere for a number of hours is actually advantageous revenue-wise, even though it may look like a waste of resources.