What ? Are they nuts ?
 

I have been flying from Cleveland to Las Vegas at least 12 times a year on business for the past two years. The outbound from Cleveland gives me many options to choose from. The return, however, has been the most positive experience I have had in a long time. The 7:10 am direct back to Cleveland gets me home at 2:00 pm in the afternoon with plenty of time for the rest of the day to do things. Now, In Continental's infinite wisdom, they have taken this away, and made it a 10:00 am departure arriving Cleveland at 5:00 pm. Why ? The early flight is always full. It just does not make any sense. It shoots my day and I'm sure many others. Any thoughts?

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

Full flights don't always mean profitable flights. If a flight isn't filling up, the airline will open up the inventory for lower fares. So flying a full 737 with mostly $200 cheapie fares doesn't necessarily make good business sense.

Cleveland is also a tricky one for CO, as there isn't as much origin/destination traffic there as the IAH or EWR hubs. So, with such a high volume of passengers connecting, that further worsens the economics of such a flight.

So, if CO thinks they can better utilize the aircraft elsewhere, that's proabably what they're doing. It's unfortunately it's a favorite flight of yours. If revenue comes back, maybe the flight will as well.

As channa said above, it may be a matter of yield, not load. The high rollers who pay for premium cabin travel do not want to leave Las Vegas at 7:10am. After a night out on the town, many are still asleep at that hour.

Nor do they live in Cleveland. :D

CAL for some reason seems to have gone this direction for flights from Pacific time zone to Cleveland. The earlier morning flights from SFO and LAX (and of course there are no longer SNA or SAN flights (I guess the latter seasonally?)) now leave 11AM at best, costing in effect an entire business day in flying to your destination. Or take the red eye.

Hey back off. Don't go knocking Ohio. They are the 5th most populated state in the US.

#7

www.census.gov

And the state ultimately responsible for electing the current administration. Ohio deserves all the knocking it can get. ;)

Took the words right out o' my mouth...

Hey wait a minute!!!

afrugal1 has mapped for me the location of every nickel video poker machine in LAS. :D

Signed,

A CLE high roller.

I was going to get on ya about your first comment but saw this one a quietly sat my a$$ back down.

Here I was thinking people with common sense had gone wayward...

-Vincent

Actually Cleveland Jews started Las Vegas...