While the fuel stops are a low probability event over the course of the whole year, they seem to be a high probability event when a weather pattern of high headwinds and poor Bay Area weather sets in. For example, the BOS-SJC flight #471 has been diverted 6 days in a row (to either DEN, SLC, or LAS). Even if you don't count the 27 hour journey on 1/7 when they were stranded in DEN for about 20 hours, the other 5 days had an average arrival time of almost 3 hours after scheduled (178 minutes according to flightaware).
Once the seat count increases to 162 it becomes a bigger risk if all seats are filled, especially on non-sharklet A320's if I correctly understand the excellent info from Aewanabe. It would be great if JB capped the sellable inventory well below 162 for westbound long transcons during months when headwinds are most likely to be high (to keep weight down), with perhaps more inventory added a few days out if amendable jet stream and destination weather becomes more probable. I somehow doubt that is likely.
Last edited by outer marker; Jan 12, 2017 at 9:57 am