LAX-ORD: Scheduled Flight Duration Changes
 

After hearing reports of some schedule changes being loaded last night, I checked my reservations and noticed that my arrival time for LAX-ORD has been moved up by 31 minutes (11:18pm to 10:47pm).

Over the next few months, flights on this route have an average scheduled duration around 4 hr 15 min. However, starting on 11/4, all durations have been loaded as 3 hr 47 min. This seems to be a bit aggressive considering flights over the past few weeks have an actual duration in the air around 3 hr 35 min. This wouldn't leave much taxiing time at either airport.

Am I missing something?

Two things come to mind: expected changes in the jet stream (with strong tailwinds, I once flew SAN-ORD <3 hours gate-gate), or the fact that the excessive block times were more often than not unnecessary and leading to poor utilization. On that flight in particular, I would think that the airport would not be as busy during the late evening hours, meaning less taxiing traffic being sent the long way over the Alpha bridge, and hopefully less traffic coming in on 9L/27R.

About a month ago I had a similar experience for a couple of BOS-LAX flights, which are typically blocked at 6:30-6:45. They all got changed to uniform 6:10 block times, which seemed VERY aggressive, especially for the winter, when flying times alone can routinely be up to 6:30 or even 7:00 on a bad day. Looks like ops planning got some sense beaten into them, because the following weekend one flight (in October) was changed back to the usual 6:30 block time. The second in January is still at a 6:10 block time. :confused: