jrl767

6- I’m more familiar with the LGA<>DCA shuttle, but I have to believe the BOS logic was similar (notwithstanding DCA peculiarities like jet curfews)

• Eastern started the on-the-hour Air-Shuttle service in both markets in the early 1960s, mainly using Lockheed Electras; the “guaranteed seat” concept meant that you could show up at the gate at 0957, and if the scheduled 1000 departure was already full, they would bring another plane over *just for you* (many of the backup sections were actually operated with Lockheed L-1049C/G Super Constellations)
• when DCA opened to jet operations in Apr 1966, EA switched the primary Shuttle fleet to the DC-9-30, but maintained both Electras and Connies as backup equipment for several more years (the last LGA-DCA flight and the first DCA-LGA used Electras due to the aforementioned jet curfews)
• American entered the LGA-DCA/BOS market around that time with BAC 1-11-400 flights, but iirc didn’t actually operate these as a “Shuttle” service
• by the mid 1970s EA had upgauged most of the Shuttle operations to the 727-200, and AA was down to a handful of flights with 727/72S equipment on each route
• New York Air showed up in both markets with hourly D9S service in the early 1980s; EA responded by upgauging LGA<>BOS to A300s
• by 1989 the competition was Pan Am vs Trump Shuttle, both airlines using the 72S; Delta acquired PA in early 1991 and maintained both Shuttle operations, and USAir acquired TS the following year
• I flew both DL Shuttle routes on 737-300s (2004) and MD-80s (2007)
• not exactly sure of the timeframe (2010-2015?), but DL migrated most of the Shuttle routes to regional affiliates (Republic, Endeavor, others?) with ERJ-170/175 aircraft
• in the same timeframe, US used a mix of A319s and EMB-190s, and JetBlue operated A320s and E90s
• AA maintained most of the US operations after the merger, but retired the E90 fleet ~2018

moondog

I guess the routes' prestige factor is a thing of the past, as well as "we'll bring out a second plane just for YOU."

Acela probably has a lot to do with this.

However, my sister still prefers flying because she can leave her house at 5a, do a full day at her NY office, and be home by 10p the same day. She tells me that she likes Acela, but airplanes are still faster than trains.

ETA: Wapo ran an article about plane v train for WAS-NYC circa 2003. The train won by about 10 minutes (wrt door to door time). I am guessing it's a close call in the BOS-NYC case, but my sister has many data points that support flying.

WHBM

I'll just add a few comments here to others. Eastern pioneered the Shuttle in 1961, on a route which up to then had been dominated by American and Northeast. Various carriers had the licence for the route, generally run as an add-on to longer distance trips, and it's indeed surprising how it has gone from carrier to carrier over time.

Reading about Eddie Rickenbacker, Eastern's longserving chief, you can sort of see how a serial aviation type like him would be attracted to the idea. Main driver was the plummet of their Lockheed Constellation values as Eastern brought in the DC8 and the Lockheed Electra at that time - there were spare aircraft available. It certainly made them dominate the market for the next 25-30 years.

British Airways brought in a comparable Shuttle operation on the main UK domestic trunk routes from the mid-1970s, based very much on the Eastern ideas, and I've spoken to one of their onetime ops personnel about it. They too had an abundance of aircraft at the time as a main driver, with the older Tridents, which formed a separate Shuttle fleet. There were a lot of similar myths, and fascination by the media. Firstly there was never a flight with one passenger, that was a tremendous marketing story, but the minimum load they ever took was seven. The backup ran 10 minutes behind the main section, and by the time it was ready to go passengers had started to turn up for the next hourly departure anyway. With an hourly operation passengers, certainly later in the day, tended to be just "turn up and go", rather than heading for a specific flight. In addition, once there was a planeload on the first section, it would be sent off, instead of waiting for departure time. BA followed the Eastern style of pay-on-board. I never actually did this, nor seemingly did most others, as I was always provided with a ticket by our travel organiser, but in days before universal credit cards they certainly took cash on board.

Key was a considerable prediction routine for loads on each flight, based on history, major events, and such like. They estimated each flight in advance, and were pleased how close they got, and then did an equivalent post-review afterwards. They were pleased with how little flight waste there was. This improved further as additional routes were added, just like the Eastern operation which did both La Guardia and Newark to both Boston and Washington.

The thing that really killed off both operations was a fundamental change in aviation, firstly the widespread adoption of yield management, different fares for different flights booked at different times, which the Shuttle could not do. Further, as the airports became full, and slot restricted, having slots available for a Shuttle backup became wasteful, they were better used for regular flights to other destinations.

jlemon

Here's a short excerpt from "Eagle", a book by Robert J. Serling concerning the history of American Airlines from the time of its founding until the mid 1980's. This excerpt concerns the decision by American in 1967 to take on Eastern in the Shuttle market between New York City, Boston and Washington D.C.....

Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, Marion Sadler (President of AA in 1967) and Bill Hogan (an AA Vice President) had to clash.

Eastern's Shuttle had almost monopolized the New York-Boston and New York-Washington markets. C.R. Smith (AA Chairman at the time) wanted to get back in, and there was no argument on that score. What ignited the Sadler-Hogan confrontation was whether to start a no-reservations service like the Shuttle or invade the two markets with regular reservations and superior in-flight service on an hourly basis.

The weapon would be the new BAC One-Eleven fleet, pitting this jet against Eastern's Electras and backup Connies. Hogan and his corporate planning group insisted the only way to take on the Shuttle was to imitate it completely. Sadler, supported by Mel Brenner (AA Vice President of Scheduling in 1967), felt American was in no position to challenge Eastern with this strategy. "You had to have backup capability to make a Shuttle-type operation work," Brenner related. "We didn't have idle planes to use as backups and Eastern, with all those fully amortized Connies, did. The only way for us to have backups would have been to take aircraft away from valuable markets, and neither Sadler or I thought this made any sense. The people in corporate planning just couldn't understand the importance of backup equipment; the number of planes they thought would be adequate was just miserable. We'd be offering a no-reservations service and then leaving people stranded because there weren't enough planes."

The quarrel was so bitter that American came within two days of a full go-ahead for a competing Shuttle service when Sadler dug in his heels and said no. The competing service launched against Eastern on February 12, 1967 was the "Jet Express", started first between New York and Boston and later extended to the New York-Washington battleground. February 12 was a Sunday, the usual day for beginning a new schedule. In retrospect, Brenner admitted Sunday morning at 7:00 am was a poor choice for so important an inaugural. On the previous Friday, Brenner went to C.R. Smith's office to invite him on the inaugural flight. "Sunday morning at seven o'clock?", Smith asked. "Yes sir," said Brenner. "I assume you have a lot of company non-revs to fill up the plane," said Smith. Nobody had thought of this ploy but arrangements were made quickly and the first Jet Express took off for Boston filled mostly with American employees and officials - the news photographers couldn't tell them apart from the paying passengers. But by the end of that first day, the BAC One-Elevens were flying about 70 percent full, and that 70 percent load factor was maintained consistently during the Jet Express's existence, which was less than two years.

It was never a real success in that it didn't dent the Shuttle's domination of the two markets. But the Jet Express wasn't discontinued for that reason. Short-haul markets are only marginally profitable unless they're served by amortized aircraft, such as Eastern possessed; the priorities of aircraft utilization required the BAC One-Eleven to be used elsewhere, on routes with more profit potential. In the two Shuttle markets, its speed advantage over the Electra was virtually nil.

BTW, American retired their BAC One-Elevens in 1972. When they did so, their One-Eleven fleet was then parked at the Tulsa airport, the home of a major AA maintenance facility. I actually saw a bunch of them parked at TUL in 1972 as I was flying on a Youth Fare standby ticket on Braniff International from Memphis to Dallas with intermediate stops in Little Rock (where I was moved from coach to first class as the main cabin was fully booked out of LIT), Fort Smith and Tulsa. And the airplane type I was flying on with Braniff was a BAC One-Eleven.

By 2005, American Eagle was operating AA code sharing service between BOS and LGA with Embraer ERJ-135 and ERJ-145 equipment. I believe AA Eagle was operating around eleven roundtrips on weekdays on the route.

As a side note, in 1989 the Trump Shuttle folks were offering an enticement for passengers flying between BOS and LGA as well as between DCA and LGA in the form of scheduled Sikorsky S-61 helicopter service between LGA and the Wall St. Heliport which they called "The Trump Shuttle Connection":

https://www.timetableimages.com/ttimages/7d8912.htm

And then there was Western. Although their service was not high frequency nor a shuttle operation, in 1987 WA was operating four roundtrip flights a day except on Saturdays between BOS and LGA with 737-300 equipment. These four flights were the only service operated by Western from LGA at the time.

Track

I have a bit of a problem with your understanding of the terms "RTW" and "transverses Asia" in post 26148. And then there's the problem of stopping at Saipan but excluding NRT. Since flying from Guam to Marseille involved flying via Anchorage, RTW for me would require returning via the western hemisphere, but that makes a stop at Saipan difficult, as flights from the U.S. to Guam (PA and CO) went via Honolulu and didn't serve Saipan. So I think you consider the NRT-ANC-AMS flight as including the western hemisphere (with ANC technically yes) and a return via Asia permissible. so we have AF or LH or BA from Nice non-stop to a western European city and an Asian city one-stop (Saipan) to Guam at the other end. That leaves Europe-Asia with two stops in the middle and with many possibilities. I offer:

Nice-CDG in an AF Caravelle
CDG-Bangkok-Hong Kong-Osaka in an AF 747-200 (could just as well have been to Seoul or Manila)
Osaka-Saipan [the one common plane and city with 1983 (a)] -Guam in a CO 727-200 (I don't know that CO flew to Osaka in 1983, but whatever)

moondog

This is the only remaining question from my recent set. It is honestly one of the most interesting mental exercises FT has endowed me with.

Here are a few hints:
-the winning city pair is extremely low demand (e.g. comparable to GUM-NCE)
-only one airline (not Delta) currently serves the origin airport, but Delta had a monopoly in the market when we did this exercise
-they only had a single route from this city
-they also had a monopoly on the second segment, though connecting options were available
-there was a fare break between the two segments (i.e. total fare is the sum of ab and bc), which is quite unusual on intra-NA flights
-no AK, HI, or Mexico is involved
-this was a round-trip ticket but needed to start at the specific origin (i.e. booking it in the reverse direction was cheaper)

I realize this is a tough question because historical airfares are hard to come by, especially from routes that no longer exist. However, I'm pretty sure you guys can figure out the first segment. There were multiple options for the second segment, but one of the smartest FTers I've met identified the best one at the time.

jrl767

”RTW” meaning “basically in the same direction” … as we have seen, the itinerary to LYS traversed both the Pacific and Atlantic, so the return from NCE traverses the Asian mainland

you’re actually not too far off here

• CDG is INCORRECT, AF is INCORRECT, CVL is INCORRECT (hint — it was a wide-body jet)
• BKK is INCORRECT, HKG is CORRECT, 747 is CORRECT (the actual connecting point was HKG)
• OSA is INCORRECT, SPN is CORRECT
• CO is INCORRECT, 72S is close enough (the aircraft of record was a 727-100)

Toshbaf

I'd like to chime in on the Eastern Air Shuttle while it's still fresh with other replies.

I heard that one could buy their ticket on board the plane. Later PeoplExpress did the same thing up to the mid 1980's on its flights from its Newark hub. It did so not only for BOS flights but nearly all flights.

I flew aboard an Eastern LaGuardia-Washington National flight once and flew the reverse direction later in the afternoon. It was one of the few times that I flew with no checked or carry on baggage except a briefcase.

moondog

We talked about PE onboard payment a page or so up. I don't think it lasted more than two years. The airline was able to save on both travel agent commissions and credit card processing fees. There are many reasons to think of for them eliminating this practice.

Tmk, Eastern never did the buy on board thing (they made you pay at the counter).

jrl767

on my first EA shuttle experience, a DCA-EWR Electra (N5517) in Aug 1974, it was indeed "pay at the counter" ... also flew DCA-LGA on a 72S in Feb 1984 when the OAG showed an actual flight number (EA1481) rather than generically listing "Air-Shuttle"

WHBM

And on the BA London to Glasgow Shuttle I never saw the pay on board, though the cabin crew did come down the cabin collecting all the tickets.

To save me adulterating this Eastern discussion with stories about the comparable British Airways one, though I am sure some issues afflicted both, here's a link to a discussion, including by a number of the actual participants, from a few years ago in another PPlace (including someone who remembered flying on the Eastern one, in a Super Connie no less, and paid on the plane) :

British Airways Shuttle dates - PPRuNe Forums

Toshbaf

Instead of LGW-EWR, could it have been Brussels - San Francisco?

moondog

I don't know the answer to this one, but my thinking was Newark-Gatwick. We've had several discussions about flagship routes here in the past. Often, but not always, airlines reserve flight numbers 1 and 2 for them.

jlemon

I think it's safe to say the People Express nonstop service between Newark (which, of course, is where the airline was based with a hub operation) and Gatwick was their initial flagship route. PE 1 operated LGW - EWR and PE 2 operated EWR - LGW. In the summer of 1984, London was the only city in Europe served by the airline. I think PE actually began serving Gatwick in 1983. I also believe the People Express service to Brussels wasn't begun until 1986.

And BTW, in 1984 the one way Premium Class fare for the PE 747 service between Newark and Gatwick was $439.00.

https://www.airliners.net/photo/Peop...-747-2/51639/L

Toshbaf

Correct.

For a short time, it was Brussels - Oakland but that was moved to San Francisco. One BRU-SFO flight stopped for refueling in Glasgow, MT with customs clearance in San Francisco.