Originally Posted by lincolnjkc

Exactly -- my fingers wouldn't let me type podium (both for the general misuse of the word [pet peeve: anywhere besides an airport you stand -behind- a lectern and -on- a podium] and the typical airline connotation for the central location where service happens pre-boarding.

The practice of "banking" flights has long mystified me, not just as far as RJs go. On one hand I'm sure it makes business sense (or it wouldn't be something that virtually every network carrier does) -- but on the other it seems extremely inefficient as far as labor goes -- if you figure that you need 'X' agents (and rampers, etc.) per flight/gate and an agent spends 'Y' minutes working a flight, it would seem that by spreading flights by 'Y' (plus a buffer) minutes would allow 'X' agents to work the same number of flights versus having 5 flights at the same time where you need 5*X agents (though I guess if your agents are hourly and you have a sufficiently deep pool of labor this may be moot) ... I digress, but the business side of commercial aviation fascinates me.