sts603

There is a 12:25 a.m. departure loaded on Fridays on a US metal 320 to DFW. Arrives about 2 a.m. Its there for multiple Fridays. Its for sale. And for the next two weeks looks pretty full. I'm, well, a little baffled as to how this got into the schedule. And perhaps more importantly, who on earth is flying on it?

dmsdfw

Interestingly, if you look up the flight number - AA616 - it gets around a bit: http://info.flightmapper.net/flight/...irlines_AA_616

DWFI

It's probably ac repositioning. And if you sell a lot of SNQO class seats, I'm sure you can get people to buy.

fastflyer

I'm flying a post-midnight US/ AA codeshare flight this Friday (late Thursday night) CLT-PWM. It's actually convenient for travel to Maine for Thursday commuters -- full day in the office on Thursday and you're at your destination by 2am. Better late than consuming a big chunk of the workday (either Thursday or Friday).

PBIGuy

US occasionally schedules a one-off late night flight. I've seen 1 AM CLT departures to FLL during spring break, added red-eyes from PHX to various east coast cities during Thanksgiving, etc. Maybe they need the aircraft in DFW for Caribbean/Mexican/Vacation Destination flights on Saturday, but in CLT for business destinations during the week.

imapilotaz

One of the things I'm looking forward to with the merger is the creation of late banks at ORD & DFW. There is currently a 1030pm "wave" that has 15-20 departures at DFW and maybe 15 at ORD, but it is hard to make stick, as the overall hub is not designed to operate that late at night. With the banking, and subsequent loss of productivity, the way to regain it, is to fly later in the day. There is no reason why you couldnt create a 1030pm bank to the midwest and east, that all arrive post 1am. That would enable folks from the Mountain and Pacific time zones to leave at 4pm and still get to the East cost the same day (long day, but still same day).

If I remember correctly DL has a 11pm bank at ATL... granted being in the Eastern timezone helps, but there's no reason why AA cant as well at a behemoth like DFW.

sts603

well this is just that it seems. A full fledged LATE bank. There are 1220am-1230am departures that I've found so far (Friday only) to MCO, PWM, EWR, JFK, ORD, PHX, PHL, DFW, MDT, BOS, BNA, MCI, ATL. Several are on 321s to boot.

rasheed

Seems to give nice options for miles redemption and employee benefit travel too.

Not much connection options in most of these though.

I also miss late night departures from the west coast to the east such as 1 am or later. When plane management software got even better, it appeared that it was better to park the plane then to run these routes.

Rasheed

CMK10

Ouch, CLT-PHX that late, that's basically an east to west redeye. Sure will be fun to get a rental car/cab/hotel shuttle that late in PHX.

On the plus side, these are probably slam dunk upgrade flights or lie flat coach in the back.

DCdeacon

Just FYI, if you're looking for these flights on the US website, you need to do a Thursday search, not Friday. These flights technically depart Friday morning (12:30am being 30 minutes into Friday), but US considers them to be the last flight of the day on Thursday, so you have to search as such.

ddistler

I recently had to take a DFW-MCI trip for family matters unexpectedly. AA Fare was $900+, US with connection in CTL was $330, so I took US.

Very late night connection (11:30 ish, and US Lounge was open) in CLT on outbound. I was shocked at how busy CTL was at that time of night, lots of arrivals and departures. Got in MCI at 3ish AM.

On the return same deal midnight connection in CTL again, that was just as busy and it was a tuesday night.

I am under the impression US operates a lot of late night flights, so this flight would seem to be the norm.

I will say it does open up lots of options with late night flights and not missing client face time.

FriendlySkies

Looking at Thanksgiving tickets for MCI-RDU and to my surprise, AA is running $700+ for the week. Decided to check US and they are more than half the cost, so I'm going to book with them.

Returning on 11/30 (Sunday) and they've got a 12:xx am flight from CLT-MCI on the ERJ-175. Kind off odd, though I'm guessing this will be pretty busy with everybody returning for work, school, etc.. I'm likely to book this, as it means I can spend almost the entire day with my family in NC, and then leave RDU at 8pm.

imapilotaz

US fully understands flexing their schedule for demand much better than the old AA did. As I said up thread, I cant wait until we get those type banks at DFW in the future.