cmhua777

I am curious what a pilot’s schedule is when they are asked to fly a short red-eye. For example, if you are flying from a non-base city, like PSP, to ORD on a red-eye, what does that day look like? Is that the only flight? Do they tack an extra leg on at at the end (e.g., ORD-CLE)? Do they tack one on in the beginning (e.g., SFO-PSP)? I am sure all the above are possible options, so curious what might be the most common and what the pilots prefer. I imagine a second flight after a red-eye would be quite taxing.

LHCVG

Not a pilot, but a pair of bookends I use that I've gleaned from FT and such over the years is that, for a major hub (or at least domicile) airport like your ORD choice, you can have everything from the one who bids essentially a "day trip" schedule as much as possible in order to spend as many dinners/breakfasts/nights/whatever with their family as possible (potentially at the expense of more lucrative bid lines for other types and schedules even), to the old saw about the FA who jam packs their schedule with what amount to a few back-to-back HKG roundtrips in as short a (legal) time as possible in order to spend the subsequent 2-3 weeks doing as they please because that (to them) is ideal quality of life.

Not necessarily a direct answer, but I've found that useful as a rule of thumb for how vast the possibilities can be with sufficient seniority if you live within a "normal" intra-metro commute of your domicile.

Counterpoint: commuting pilots obviously might find these types of itineraries great for getting home to the family as soon as possible, where the "short red-eye" is the last trip/leg of a bid schedule, and they choose that specifically to catch the first flight of the day out to their home.

LarryJ

A red-eye flight will almost always be a single flight during the duty period. There are trips with two duty periods in a day, though. For example, SEA-IAD red-eye followed by IAD-PHX that same evening with a day layover in between. You aren't going to fly a red-eye then continue on with another flight in the same duty period.

UAL250

Fascinating. Would have never guessed this is a thing. Sounds pretty brutal! I suppose you can get some good sleep at an airport hotel though.

lamphs

UA6104, IAD-LGA today. GA makes announcements about an on-time departure, FA makes announcements about an on-time departure. Pilot crew makes an announcement about an on-time departure. I think we pushed just a couple minutes early. Great!

Headed for runway. 5-6 minutes later, parked in the 'penalty' box. Pilot crew makes an announcement - in penalty box until 9:35 (45 minutes after scheduled departure time).

I am curious as to whether or not the GA, the FAs, and/or the pilots know about these delays in advance of sort of making continuous announcements of an 'on-time' departure.

Not a complaint, especially since arrival was still a couple of minutes early. (And I assume such delays are built into the schedule since this flight was booked for 1 HR 51 MIN, but actual flight time was far less.)

fumje

They don't get the wheels up time until they push, and the schedule is padded to account for congestion, but that means they need to depart on time to make the schedule. If they're off the gate and ready to go, that is departed. The WAS-NYC flights regularly have a long hold time for takeoff.

hockey7711

Probably flow control at lga

lamphs

Thanks. This was just a recent example and I was aware of flow control to the NYC area. But my question was answered as to whether or not this was known in advance (sounds as if no one really knows until actual departure from gate).

mduell

It's... complicated. At the time the flight pushed back (1244Z), FAA was expecting a 1311Z wheels up. The delay was actually due to Potomac TRACON rather than NYC, which may relate to the weird route you took out of town.
Then once you actually pushed the FAA expected at 1306Z wheels up. Then at 1251Z the FAA was briefly expecting 1252Z (which you obviously couldn't make), so you got the 1335Z slot.

Did someone at United have access to all these times? Sure. Did they relay them to the GA/FA before those pre-push announcements? Doubt it. Captain may have known about the 1311Z time from ATC, and may not have thought it was noteworthy when you were going to push on time and that the block times are heavily padded on routes like these.

To the customer-facing sides of the airline, "departure" and "arrival" are all about the gate, and whatever time you spent taxiing out/in flight/taxiing in is all fungible (subject to the tarmac delay limits and responsibilities on each end).

LarryJ

Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. Sometimes the information is not available until after we call to taxi.

If the FAA's national ATC command center in Washington has a ground delay program (GDP) or ground stop (GS) that affects the flight, the information is available ahead of time though it will take some minutes from a new GDP/GS being issued for it to filter down to the crews working the flight. A just-issued GDP/GS might not come to the crew's attention until we call to taxi.

You can see the current GDP and GS programs at the National Airspace System Status page, https://nasstatus.faa.gov/. Click the [Full Operational Plan] link near the bottom of the page for a discussion on all active, planned, and potential programs for the day.

Airports close in to a hub will often be subject to "call for release". That means that every departure to the hub city requires a release time and that release time is not established until the flight is ready to, or just before they are ready to, taxi. In those situations, a controller in the departure airport's tower calls for a release time for each flight to that destination.

Say Vandelay

If I wanted to use onboard wifi and LiveATC to create a poor man's channel 9, are there any tips or websites for determining the right arrival/departure frequencies and centers based on the routing, which I can see on Flightaware?

EmailKid

Interesting discussion., so thanks for the input.

One thing that occurred to me is that even if the plane is not cleared for takeoff, there may be another plane waiting for the gate (especially at busy airports), so unless the plane currently parked there pushes back, the pax in the waiting plane will be sitting on the tarmac (Happened to me more than once, and I'm sure to others who fly regularly - a very frustrating experience, especially if one has a tight connection).

RobOnLI

Curious what you think the "weird route you took out of town" is? Today's 6104 and all the previous ones this week look exactly normal to me. Out on rwy 31, right turn across Maryland and south of BWI (can always see it off the left side of the plane) and then a left turn up through NJ. I take this route a few times a year and the pattern is entirely normal to me. I think only once I've seen the flight go west of PHL which was 'weird'.

Nice post on the ATC times.

-RM

LarryJ

I don't know of any.

Imstevek

Great question. Can you predict the sectors & handoffs based on the flight plan, or do you tune into the frequencies/channels you get told to, with no ability to anticipate? Thank you!