Originally Posted by
physioprof
Super interesting to think about this. If you could increase utilization by 10%, then you could fly 10% fewer planes of that size? Does the math work linearly like that?
Originally Posted by
LarryJ
If an airplane flies 10 hours per day, when is it going to fly that extra hour? How do you fit that extra hour into that airplane's schedule for the day?
Originally Posted by
jpezaris
Given the magnitude of potential savings, I would assume large airlines have the funds to hire competent Operations Research folks to balance the undoubtedly large number of variables that go into schedule planning.
Related to my earlier comment, since presumably an aircraft on "in service" maintenance status (or whatever the terminology is for not being in the shop and available for revenue service) is already flying an optimized schedule from an efficiency and profitably point of view (i.e., an airline is not going to operate a money-losing flight just to increase daily aircraft utilization figures), any increase in average utilization over a long period of time like per year or for the life of the aircraft would likely have to come from the time it is out of service for maintenance. So things like heavy maintenance checks would have to be sped up.