Originally Posted by
Vulcan
While this is technically true, it is common sense that if a flight to PEK takes 13-14 hours, then 2 hour restocking, you need more than one plane (unless, of course, the new 787s can warp time
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Yes, these planes are on a 'race track that sees the plane comming to NRT from EWR go on to IAH (and vice versa), and then maybe on to Europe.
Still, using the 787s for Asia get less utilization out of them (time in the air flying passengers) than if they are used IAH-Europe-IAH. Just my opinion.
Utilization is not how many trips a plane makes a day. It's how many hours it's in the air. The question with these long Asian routes is whether the fare can be high enough to justify the long hours in the air and sometimes on the ground.
Like I said, CO's flights to Asia has high utilization, except for HKG. Unlike NW and UA which leave a dozen of 747s and 777s sitting in HKG, BKK, SIN, SGN, TPE, etc every night. Or South American flights that have the planes sit there for most of the day.
But really. Who cares? It's about how much money can each plane makes for the company. Of course, the best are routes that are short, high utilization, and full of high-yield customers. That's why EWR-TLV is so lucrative.
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Edit: BTW, you're absolutely correct that CO can use the planes after coming back from a long Asian trips to other destination. So, one should simply calculate the overall utilization for a whole fleet. And that's also why CO is wise to keep all its 777 in the same configuration.
An example of very poor utilization is Air Canada's A345 for YYZ-HKG. Two planes for just one daily flight each way. But that's not the case with CO's operation.