Aircraft Type Usage Around the World
 

I'm off to Asia for a vacation next week and one of the joys of intra-Asia travel is the assortment of widebodies on even very short segments. That got me thinking and wondering why that's not the case elsewhere.

For example, some very short sectors in Asia will get large widebodies whereas in North America or Europe we will get narrowbodies.

Is it solely a function of demand? I sure wish we had more widebodies flying domestically in the US.

I'm curious about the demand, economics, etc. All very fascinating - would love if someone could shed some insight. Thanks!

My best guess would be based on demand, efficiency and money. Airlines in the U.S are a lot larger then those in Asia when it comes to fleet size. It no longer makes sense to hurl one of an airlines fifteen 777s on an ATL-MCO-ATL once a day when it can be done 10 times a day on one of an airlines sixty five 737s. U.S airlines make more money using wide bodies on international routes. They would need to charge international fares on short domestic flights to pay for the operating cost of a wide body, and we know how hungry the flying public is for cheap fares.

For much of the past couple of years I've been having odd trips here and there.

Jersey to Guernsey once a week on those little Trilanders which I wish Blue Island didn't drop. The ATRs they now use are very soulless in comparison. I like their Jetstream but don't get it very often.

Last summer I had a spell of 13 flights in two weeks, to either Guernsey or Tortola, BVI and the variety of planes was huge. I got a CW upgrade on the way out to Antigua which was a bonus. On the flipside in the Caribbean we get poxy Dash 8s with open seating. They were using them on a flight from Sharm to Luxor too. Luxury it is not :-)

I believe-and its all speculation-when it comes to Thai Airways, they have exclusively wide bodies. (Never have seen a narrow body.)

They run their wide bodies on varying length international. From shorter hops to intercontinental. Those flights tend to fill. During the layover periods when they would normally sit, they run them on the short intracountry flights. Thus you will fly for an hour on a 747 to Phuket etc.

This is changing though (sadly) - many Asian carriers are placing very large narrow body orders.

Thai also has ancient 734's with awful seats they run on some intra-asian and domestic runs (I have flown them to USM and VTE). Also, Thai is opening Thai Smiles (it's open already actually) as a low cost carrier (but still part of TG) with an all narrowbody fleet.

Two other factors -

1) Competition. If 2 airlines fly between A and B, the airline with the most flights gets a disproportionally higher % of the customers. Therefore, flight frequency is important, and many flights with smaller aircraft are necessary to maintain a competitive edge. With a route without competition, it is much less expensive to fly one or two large aircraft than 10 smaller ones, even on a relatively short flight.

2) Maintenance and repair. It is much cheaper to maintain a fleet if they are all the same type or if there are only a small number of different types of aircraft. Flying a widebody on a short flight may be more economical than maintaining another type of aircraft for this type of route.

Interesting. In the last few days I've done SIN-BKK-SIN in a 777 and A340-600. Quite a treat for 2-hour flights (in addition to full meal service).

I think it has to do with local conditions and the local infrastructure. Let's take 3 examples:

1. The US: large territory, lots of airports, lots of people traveling (due to high living standards), practically no trains (a bit on the East Coast, but overall an insignificant amount), good highways but low speed limits. This situation calls for many flights between many different points and the logical choice is small planes. Regional Jets galore.

2. Europe: better infrastructure offers the possibility to avoid planes in some cases (high speed trains, highways that allow driving fast). So for short hops there are sometimes alternatives and that significantly cuts down on the need for feeder flights on very small planes. That's why for European airlines RJs are fairly rare and mid-range planes (B737/A320 family) are common instead. There are stil a large number of big cities, significant amount of travel (thanks to high living standards) and significant competition in the airline industry (there are more airlines than in the US) - all that calls for increased frequencies rather than fewer flights on larger planes. There are no intra-EU flights on wide bodies that I know of.

3. Asia: fewer airports, concentrated in large, densely-populated cities. There are fewer major airlines than in Europe, but more than in the US. The level of competition is somewhere in the middle. The infrastructure is fairly poor in most places (Japan being an exception) but it's catching up. For now, trains and roads are not a good alternative yet, which means that flying is still the norm for even shorter distances. Lower living standards in most places cause (a) fewer people to fly and (b) diminished flexibility (in terms of timing) is required. Wide bodies still make sense, but in some time (say 10-20 years) I expect intra-Asia flights to move towards a situation that resembles Europe.