Originally Posted by
emcampbe
Even with these days of a ton of delays and cancellations, monthly OTP still seems to be in the low to mid 80% or higher, and the amount of canceled flights seems to be ~the 1% range. That means overall, the system is fairly effective at getting people to where they want to go on time, despite the hard days. It’s certainly not perfect - but works well enough. A system of middle of the night flights that cause the airlines to lose isn’t the answer.
Fair enough, this also resembles my conclusion in my previous post.
I wouldn't necessarily say that night flights cause an airline to
lose though. 12+ years of night bank ops at LAS should be long enough to prove the opposite. Less profit than during the day? Sure. But I'm certain that plane is not making much profit either idling on the ground for 6 hours.
Filling every seat on the plane during daytime at higher fares, aided by a lack of serious competition and shrinking flight schedules in many markets (including here in PHX), is just
even more profitable than operating the plane at night at lower fares (which would result in lower demand for daytime flights). The record profits have to come from somewhere
