Although I frequently experience early departures on int'l flights, prior to 9/11, this seemed to happen very rarely on domestic flights due to all the FF's like myself showing up 3 - 4 minutes prior to departure.

Since 9/11, I have been arriving at the gate well ahead of time-- evidently I'm not the only one. Last week, I boarded an extremely full TWA flight from ABQ to STL. Shortly after boarding, I heard the FA's incredulously discovering that everyone had already boarded and was "ready to go", over 20 minutes prior to departure time. The FA's informed the pilot and collectively I heard the crew discussing their options. As I was in the first row, I was then able to overhear the pilot's call to TWA flight dispatch. They cleared him to depart, and we ended up in STL over 30 minutes early (virtually no taxi time in either STL or ABQ).

I've seen a few other early departures as well. Anyone else noticing this phenomenon?

Not so much early departures, but UAL released a press release recently that they are operating at something like 95% ontime lately, their highest rate ever.

I guess when you have less flights and more equipment to operate them, that really improves your performance.

Oh yeah, US and UA both had days recently with zero cancelled flights, which is also extremely rare.

NWA PHX -> DTW last Sat at 7:00 AM departed 10 minutes early. Plane was not full but I think all passengers had arrived early. Gate agents came to the secuity line and escorted passengers to the front of the line (nice).

Bob
www.InternetTravelTips.com

I have noticed that on routes where there are frequent flights ie dca-ord that there is a lot of stand by passenger activity- moving from a later flight to an earlier one since many are arriving early for security checks. If the lines are short one can get on an earlier flight. Two weeks ago I took an earlier flight both to and from ORD on UAL. There were more standbys than scheduled pax on the ORD-DCA leg.

My fear of standing by for an earlier flight is that I'd get stuck in a middle seat and have no hope for an upgrade by getting on the list so late.

I have been changing to earlier flights, but only over the phone a day or 2 in advance when I can lock in an upgrade or good seat.

Last weekend (Nov 2 & 4) my son and I went ORD-MSP-ORD. Before the fist flight my son asked me what would happen if everyone is early (we were at the gate 90+ min before flight time). I told him that they flight might take off early, but in 25 years of flying it happened to me only once, so our flight will not take off early.

Sure enough, both flight took off about 10 min early.

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Sagy

Flew on DL 255 (CVG-TUS) on 11 Nov. Flight was completely boarded 15 minutes ahead of schedule, pulled back from the gate 8 minutes ahead, and was in the air 4 minutes ahead.

We arrived in TUS 32 minutes ahead of schedule, and had to sit on the tarmac for 12 minutes waiting on a gate.

tovaz

This phenomenon of "early departures" is now pretty common: I've taken off 3-10 minutes early on several occasions since about 9/20. I guess when you've got the plane loaded and the seats full with every checked in passenger, why not?

The "ON TIME" arrivals figures are bunk now. First, the airlines themselves have lengthened the "time" for all their flights over the last 18 months! Surprise! Now with fewer flights and less taxi time, you're in "early"!

Don't kid yourself: SFO and LAX did *not* get further apart, and planes don't go slower these days. They just built the atrocious delays into the schedule, and now we're getting a little relief. When they go back to honest scheduling once again, to reflect the reality of today's lowered flight volumes, the "late" will be the "late" again.......

Well, I don't see why this is a problem. As roads have gotten more congested, bus companies have been doing the same as well. If a bus takes 30 minutes without traffic to go from A to B, but takes 1 hour during morning rush hour, don't you think that the bus company should adjust the schedule to indicate that the 6 am departure arrives at 7 as opposed to 6:30? Why would it be any different for the airlines?

Airports are getting congested, and that's a problem, but a separate one from the airlines maintaining the promise of getting you at destination at the time they say they would.

I didn't say it was a problem; only that an airline touting its "95% On-Time!" figure would now be utterly incomparable to before 9/11. In fact, almost everything I've been on is "on time", due to the fact that they had built in the expected delays.

I just suspect that when the scheduling gurus get down to business again, and set the flights for maximum productivity with the equipment, then UA will be late again on nearly every flight for this route, unless there is wholesale change.

So what's the problem?

They are advertising that their performance has been consistent with what they've promised, not that they have the fastest service.

The scheduled time of a flight is not the amount of time it takes to fly as fast as possible on a geodistic path between the two cities. It's the amount of time that they expect it to take for them to get you there. And they're doing it.

This is a Good Thing(tm) and allows travelers to better manage schedules.

Personally, if the flight is less than two hours, I will always opt to risk the middle coach seat than wait in the airport ...