Originally Posted by DHAST
Inflt,
Some of your logic really doesn't hold here. As far as aircraft "positioning" goes, you can just route them with a stop or two across the country... ala LAX-ORD-LGA, or LAX-IAH-DCA.
In our case, the stops would be in MDW and HOU but, that's besides the point. A typical red-eye arrives on the east coast at 6-7AM. This would mean the intermediate stops would have to depart somewhere between 3 and 4AM. I'm assuming the number of people who would show up for a 3AM departure to BWI is pretty low...assuming the TSA would be around at that hour to screen them. With a low number of "locals" boarding in MDW or HOU you're left counting on "thru" Customers to keep the flight profitable...if that's the case...it seems to make more sense to just fly the transcon non-stop in the first place.
So the redeye doesn't serve a positioning function that is unavailable elswhere.
I'm not sure what that means...but, I haven't had my coffee yet!
Also, out of the west coast, you have select departure times that make sense when timed for east coast arrivals. 0800 flights get in in time for dinner, mid-day departures get in in time to get you into bed to get enough sleep for the next business day, and, well, anything else is a waste of time. Do arrivals between 2200-0400 make much sense? Not really.
Given the fact that SWA caters to a higher percentage of leisure travelers the late day west coast departures tend to serve the typical passenger a little better. The problem with flying West to East has always been "paying back" the time difference. A 2AM arrival in BWI allows a LAX vacation to soak up a little more sun or a LAS gambler a little more time at the tables. They seem to have found the sweet spot near but, not quite red-eyes as in my experience the loads tends to be pretty healthy.
When you say that redeyes tend to have lower LF, and that WN's break even LF is already low, doesn't that mean you can profitably run redeyes because at WN you need fewer people to break even? So, I don't understand how your lower break even load factor makes your profits on redeyes even thinner.
Your understanding is correct, I misspoke...Thank You for the correction!
And as far as that 0200 arrival in BWI goes, that makes zero sense to me... at least with the majors, the left coast redeyes get in at an appropriate time to make early morning connections without extended layovers.
There are no scheduled connections off such an arrival. Any Customer with an inbound connection of a 0200 BWI arrival has bought two tickets and "built" the connection herself.