og, the long sectors would certainly be beneficial to the aircraft, I was talking more in terms of limited down-time to perform maintenance - and not just on the actual aircraft, but on all of the other stuff that goes into the in-flight experience - IFE, galleys, and so on. I know they tried to run a daily SYD-LAX using the SP's using only two aircraft, and the frequency with which that flight was replaced by a -200 with an en-route stop became greater towards the end, due to problems arising because of limited maintenance time.

Dave