marnold3

According to www.onemileatatime.com, AA will start daily nonstop service between New York JFK and Orange County SNA this June using the A321T.

cesco.g

Good for AA. That's gonna give UA some head-scratching, as they run a B737 to EWR pre-Covid!

bhomburg

Nice!
Thanks for the find!

IADCAflyer

Thats a big plane for a short runway at SNA. Is the assumption that the lack of passenger seats allows for a lighter load?

bhomburg

The A321T has such low-density seating that I don't see the short runway being an issue at all.

Carolina2Cali

Related but not directly, is there a way to find a list of AA routes that carry lie-flats and is updated by seasonality? I loved the LAX-CLT run of lie flats recently but now they are gone.

aztimm

I know that HP/US had B757 service to SNA. Is the A321T larger than that?

marnold3

The 757-200 that HP/US operated was a larger aircraft than the A321T. The 757 length was 155 ft. 3 in as opposed to 146 ft. for the A321. The wingspan of the 757 was 124 ft. 8 in for the 757 as opposed to 111 ft. 10 in for the A321. The MTOW for the 757 was 255,000 lbs. as opposed to 206,000 lbs. for the A321.

Herb687

It has nothing to do with the size of the aircraft. It's all about takeoff performance and thrust-to-weight ratio is the most important driver of that. The 757 is an incredibly powerful aircraft. I think that certain RB211 powered variants of the 757 had the highest thrust-to-weight ratio of any commercial airliner.

An A321T will have better runway performance than a standard density configuration of the A321 with same engines and wing.

Often1

One presumes that AA checked that the aircraft is capable of performing the flight.

Antarius

The higher MTOW and larger wing are highly beneficial for the 757 for such runways. These more than make up for the extra 10 feet of length

hbtr

At one time AA had a 321 (I think LUS) on the SNA-PHX route. Admittedly that flight wouldn’t need to carry as much fuel as a transcon, but it would have a denser passenger load than the 321T.

marnold3

I'm not an aeronautical engineer but when I do the thrust to weight ratio of the two planes, I get an interesting result. Using a total thrust of 358 kN and a MTOW of 115,680 kg for the 757, you get a thrust to weight ratio of 0.00309 kN/kg. Using a total thrust of 294 kN and a MTOW of 93,500 kg for the 321, you get a thrust to weight ratio of 0.00314 kN/kg. If you use pounds for thrust (instead of kilonewtons) and pounds for weight (instead of kilograms), you get a dimensionless ratio of 0.315 for the 757 and 0.320 for the 321. In both cases, the thrust to weight ratio seems to be greater for the A321 than for the 757. In fact the thrust to weight ratio seems to be about 1.02 times greater (three significant figures) for the 321 than for the 757.

I realize this goes against the conventional wisdom concerning these two aircraft so I certainly hope somebody corrects me if I'm in error on these calculations. The data I am using is from the aircraft comparison chart at Airbus A321-200 vs. Boeing 757-200.

Please note that I am using the higher powered RB211 engine in the calculation for the 757. Thanks to Herb687 for that information!

econ

References widebody schedule (won't have the A321T though)

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/33044353-post2.html

pmblinn

Slightly OT...

If memory serves, it was the jet wash of a 757 on approach to SNA that was determined to have been responsible for the crash of a following private jet. Very sad occasion. I don't believe 757s ever flew in or out of SNA after that.