Trying to understand WN flight # patterns
Jul 21, 2011, 11:53 pm
#16
Moderator, Southwest Airlines and Choice Privileges
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Central Texas
Posts: 3,036
From having taken a brief look at your site, I thought that might be the goal.
You should know that WN is very different from other airlines with their scheduling. The high frequency shuttle routes may be relatively constant, but on other routes things change frequently and enormously. Looking at the available system-wide schedules, for example, there are five different schedules in August, ten in September, seven in October, eleven in November, thirteen in December, and four in the first six days of January. And then you have the Saturday and AM Sunday differences in cases where a listed schedule covers both weekdays and weekends.
Not everything changes in every schedule, of course, but, again, things that do change can change dramatically. Building up a flight performance database like the one you are trying to build will definitely be a challenge with WN.
Another thing to consider: WN has been doing a good bit of seasonal schedule customization. I know you had time of day parameters in your database, but I don't recall seasonality. If WN serves city pair A-B with an 11 am flight in the summer but a 3pm flight in the winter, for example, how useful is to simply know that WN's track record for the city pair is better at 11am than it is at 3pm? Especially when the next time around the times might be 9:30am and 4:30pm?
You should know that WN is very different from other airlines with their scheduling. The high frequency shuttle routes may be relatively constant, but on other routes things change frequently and enormously. Looking at the available system-wide schedules, for example, there are five different schedules in August, ten in September, seven in October, eleven in November, thirteen in December, and four in the first six days of January. And then you have the Saturday and AM Sunday differences in cases where a listed schedule covers both weekdays and weekends.
Not everything changes in every schedule, of course, but, again, things that do change can change dramatically. Building up a flight performance database like the one you are trying to build will definitely be a challenge with WN.
Another thing to consider: WN has been doing a good bit of seasonal schedule customization. I know you had time of day parameters in your database, but I don't recall seasonality. If WN serves city pair A-B with an 11 am flight in the summer but a 3pm flight in the winter, for example, how useful is to simply know that WN's track record for the city pair is better at 11am than it is at 3pm? Especially when the next time around the times might be 9:30am and 4:30pm?
Jul 22, 2011, 11:10 am
#17
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Redlands, CA
Programs: AS, AA, WN
Posts: 974
A bit OT, but what's up with flight numbers for MSP-SEA on DL? They are, in order,
1653
1453
1753
2153
2253
41
1953
Except for 41 (which a 'continuation' of LHR-MSP), they are all XX53, not really in order and missing a few numbers. It's a rather interesting way of grouping them, and I also haven't noticed this on any other city pair that I've looked at.
1653
1453
1753
2153
2253
41
1953
Except for 41 (which a 'continuation' of LHR-MSP), they are all XX53, not really in order and missing a few numbers. It's a rather interesting way of grouping them, and I also haven't noticed this on any other city pair that I've looked at.