Originally Posted by
jjbiv
WN 5072 ONT-PHX is scheduled to arrive at 4:58 PM. On Sunday it arrived a few minutes late at 5:07 PM. WN 2273 PHX-SEA is scheduled to depart at 4:55 PM. This looks like an impossible aircraft routing until you consider the planned inbound aircraft for flight 2273 comes from flight 1299 PVR-PHX which is scheduled to arrive at 3:18 PM, leaving plenty of time before it departs to SEA 97 minutes later. However, on Sunday 1299 was late in to Phoenix due to a late inbound aircraft. Flight 763 SNA-PVR brings in the aircraft for outbound flight 1299 to PHX. On Sunday, flight 763 departed SNA 5 minutes early at 8:55 AM but was diverted to LAX from over Baja California after it had already been flying toward PVR for about 50 minutes. The aircraft arrived in LAX at 11:16 AM. At LAX Soutwhest swapped the flight to PVR to a new aircraft and it left at 1:15 PM and arrived at 5:59 PM. They did a quick international turn in PVR and departed at 6:42 PM and arrived in PHX at 7:01 PM. So Southwest knew early in the day they had a problem with flight 2273. Rather than delay 2273 to SEA until at least 7 PM, they took the aircraft coming in to PHX from ONT at 5 PM and sent it out to SEA at 5:59 PM, saving at least an hour and a half for the customers on flight 2273.
This is a perfect example of how complex airline operations are and how the root cause of a delayed flight may not be immediately apparent at first glance. All things considered, Southwest did a good job minimizing the impact.
To minimize the cost, I would argue that WN 5072 have 3 segments: DEN->ONT (reg N7880D, 737-700), ONT->PHX (reg N7880D, 737-700), PHX->MDW (reg N7737E, 737-700, inbound from CUN, landed in PHX around 4:00 p.m., and I don't think there is a lot cleaning going on with SWA right now), wouldn't it be easier to swap, send N7737E to SEA instead, and then everything pretty much on time?
There might be scheduled maintenance or rotation but this is just an example of SWA pushing things to a limit so if things go wrong nothing much can be done.
I've also experienced delay due to waiting for connecting bags at PHX.
SWA model with reduced schedule is not feasible for anyone who need to get from A to B given a fixed time frame. There is no room for mistake, for missed connection, it would be lucky if the next available flight is 4-5 hours away, assume there are still seats available.
And I absolutely don't like SWA's mentality of pushing things to a limit in this business, given their tickets are not cheap, and their flights were fully loaded on pretty much every single one this year.