Air China - slow planes on some routes?
 

So I booked a "mileage run" on Air China to make sure I'd earn 1K next year. It involved routing TPE-PEK-MEL. My TPE-PEK flight was about 4 hours. (Also, they parked the plane a 15 minute shuttle ride away from the actual terminal...lol) My usual conversion is something like "planes fly about 500 mph, so every hour is about 500 miles," which should mean that a 4 hour flight earns about 2000 miles. But when I was looking my mileage spreadsheet, I noticed that TPE-PEK earns only 1000 miles. "This doesn't make sense!" I said to myself. Then I checked flightaware and saw that TPE-PEK flight flies at only 300 mph! Surprisingly, PEK-MEL flies at the normal 500 mph. Both routes are A330-300s.

I guess Air China doesn't think it's important to get people quickly from Taipei to Beijing (perhaps for fuel costs). I thought this was interesting, because on all of my United flights, I've never observed a jet plane (i.e. A320+ or 737+) fly at anything less than near cruising speed.

And then I found out that 1K bonus miles (100% of base miles) doesn't apply to Air China. Wah :(. At least the PQMs otherwise posted without trouble.

I think the base miles are 1339. What happens after that is based on your fare class.

Usually actual aircraft speeds are a function of weather, winds, air traffic control, gate availability and probably other operational considerations

I believe you're looking at a filed speed on Flightaware which isn't indicative of the maximum cruising speed at all. I believe that is a projected average that factors in the much slower speeds of takeoff, climb, approach, etc. and possibly winds aloft, but haven't looked at the Flightaware info to know for sure where that particular figure comes from. But anyway, if you look at the graph of speed and altitude for a flight you'll see that the cruising speeds are much higher than that. Looking at graphs for a couple of the flights from the carrier and route you mentioned, it shows "normal" cruising speeds for the cruise portions of the flight. Other carriers flying that same route have similar flight times.

The scheduled time (door closed to door opened) of a flight between 2 airports is based on

• time on the ground from the door closed to ready for take off. For some airports this can be a lot of time.
• take-off and climb to altitude.
• the cruise at altitude. Now days the speed of aircraft does not change much from minimum to maximum. And ground speed is airspeed plus/minus winds. The prevailing wind in some places can be a lot.
• the route is not always a straight line between airports. There are "highways in the air". And politics can influence a route.
• decent from altitude to the airport landing.
• time on the ground from touch down to the door opened. For some airports this can be a lot of time.
• some airlines add padding for air traffic delays, weather, ground delays.

The time flying at altitude is only a portion of the total time..
http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=TPE-PEK+&DU=mi&SU=kts&RS=best

You do not always earn 1 frequent flyer mile for 1 mile of distance. Now not unusable to earn 25%, 50%, 75% or what ever
http://www.wheretocredit.com/air-china

PEK typically has long delays on departure or arrival (which is why I won't book connections under 3 hours there).

For a longhaul flight this doesn't make as big a % difference in total flight duration as a shorthaul flight.

Please follow the redirect as we move this thread.

~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk