Originally Posted by
After Burner
Still??
Yes. FL280 going home right now.
Cruising at a higher altitude is going to improve fuel economy but probably won't get you better speed. Higher altitude may result in lower speed.
I have in the past heard pilots say that due to the higher fuel burn at lower altitudes, they generally fly slower at those lower altitudes in order to reduce fuel burn. E.g. one time I had a flight where one of the AC (air conditioning, not Air Canada) packs was out, so we were restricted to 25,000 feet. The pilot said that we had to fly slower as a result in order to consume fuel, and that was by far the slowest IAH-YYC flight I've ever done.
I assumed the same logic was at play here (albeit YYC<>YUL is much more within the 223's range than IAH-YYC is in the CRA's). But I'll go check the FlightAware logs when I get home to see if the data supports that.
I can't think of any other reason, with no ground delays, why these flights would so consistently be so slow - if it were winds, there should be a gain in one direction, but YUL<>YYC is consistently over block both directions. Today, all 3 YUL-YYCs were over block. So were all 3 YYC-YULs. It's not that bad every day, but the vast majority seem to be over block in both directions.