SparseFlyer

I was just shopping for IAHYYC flights, and noticed that AC flights are 4h long, but UA flights are 4h30m.

Does AC allow pilots to fly their planes faster?

jcp3rd

Schedule padding. A time-honored tradition.

eigenvector

They both fly at the same speed but only United pax make their onward connections.

YOWCDNFF

Once airborne, the CRA that AC uses is indeed faster than the 737 used by competing airlines, by roughly 20mph.

ridefar

Unless it has to do a fuel stop in DEN because, well, it really is too long a route for this aircraft. (Fellow pax told me this is the longest scheduled CRA route in the world... no idea if that is true.)

eigenvector

Looking at FlightAware, AC has had to divert IAH YYC twice in the last two weeks, once to Great Falls and once to DEN. Is this route pushing the range of a CR9?

ridefar

See my post above. I think this is standard whenever there are head winds. Which there often are.

SearsTower

YVR to ORD is 10 miles further according to Webflyer

Adam Smith

SparseFlyer, this is the answer. Note also that AA schedules DFW<>YYC for about the same time as AC does on the IAH<>YYC despite DFW being about 30 minutes closer to YYC.

My AC flights to/from IAH have been late far more often than my UA flights. But the actual elapsed time on the flights has been pretty similar. Whether AC actually flies the CRAs these hypothetical 20 mph faster or not, I don't know.

YXE is also sometimes a fuel stop.

It's definitely pushing the limits of the CRA/CR9, but fuel diversions aren't actually all that common. I've flown AC IAH-YYC many, many times and never had to make a fuel stop. One time they had said we were going to have to stop in YXE for fuel, but winds were lighter than expected or whatever and we went straight through to YYC.

SparseFlyer

25m is a pretty intense padding TBH.

I wonder if this is why the US carriers have "better" OTP than AC.

Adam Smith

Yes, that's a big part of it.

RatherBeInYOW

Nothing wrong with it either. Padding the flight time or allowing more turn around time amounts to the same thing for pax in the end; you aren't getting screwed by a schedule that was completely unrealistic in the first place.

Amusingly when I was flying AC889 (so a 763) home before Christmas the captain came on and said there was a DL flight slightly ahead and slightly below us, and it was pretty cool seeing a plane flying almost alongside out the window. But the captain pointed out that the DL flight was flying faster and would soon disappear out of view. So sometimes AC planes fly slower ;-)

canopus27

This is an old thread, but I suspect it's still true: Are planes travelling slower to save fuel?

Specifically, the airlines can certainly make their own decisions about the most cost effective way to fly from A to B.

Adam Smith

I never said there was. In fact, I think it's the right approach and better than building in more turnaround time, because it makes onward connections much less likely to be disrupted. I usually have no qualms about booking pretty short connections on DL, for instance, because I know there's a high likelihood that my inbound will be early or, at least, on time.

I did blanch at a 31-minute connection that DL offered me through MSP recently though, that was cutting it just a bit too close.

KenHamer

If airlines that "pad" their schedules more reliably arrive on time is it really padding?