Frequent US Schedule Changes
 

I'm a long time AA flyer with elite status for the last 4 years.

Recently I have been looking and booking on US as AA fares on my frequented route (SEA-BOS) have been too high compared to US (in some isolated cases) and competitor airlines (AS, B6). My company's booking engine will not allow us to book fares that are a certain percentage higher than the lowest possible for the day and time of day that we are travelling.

I'm booking US when AA isn't feasible with the thought of at least getting a shot at an upgrade, however unlikely, and to get credit for AAG metal to satisfy my 4 segment minimum for elite status.

I have several upcoming trips and one thing I'm noticing is that the once per day US flight SEA-PHL changes departure times drastically over the next few months. For example right now it is leaving at 8:35am, next month it leaves at 6:40am and a month after it's back to 8:00am and then I think it becomes a red-eye leaving at 10:20pm.

On the surface this doesn't seem conducive to attracting and retaining elite business flyers. I recognize that US was/is much more sophisticated with a dynamic schedule and revenue optimization but it almost seems like the schedule changes every few weeks which could be very off-putting to a business traveler.

My questions then is whether this is a normal practice for US? Does it simply mean that I live in a market (SEA) that they aren't very serious about except perhaps for connections thru PHX or for leisure travel?

I'm concerned that as the carriers integrate further we may see variability on my staple routes thru ORD and DFW. I've already seen the "benefit" of banking at those hubs as my bread and butter 6am Seattle departures are now at 5am and layovers at DFW are either 40 minutes or 2 1/2 hours.

Thanks for any insight you can lend.

I can only share my experience from my home airport (ALB) but US has been monkeying around with the schedule, especially the early morning flights. The 5:30 flight to DCA has varied between 5:30 and 6:30 and the 5:30 flight to PHL was recently removed altogether, killing the entire first bank of connections one could have made in PHL. Extremely inconvenient as connections at DCA are limited and the first CLT flight is too late for useful morning connections.

It looks like starting in March they're getting rid of much of the daily variability in the schedule and going to mostly flights that operate 7x/week instead. Doesnt much help if I can't reliably get anywhere before noon using those flights unless I leave the day before.

This is a new thing, and I believe is merger-related schedule meddling. At least I hope it is, because it never used to happen before.

I'm hoping that it's only temporary fluctuations as well. The loss of the ALB to PHL 5:30 flight has been a quite a blow to my travel itinerary. I called US Airways customer service and inquired at the airport and no one seems to have any idea why the schedule change. I'm having to fly out on Sunday night instead of my standard Monday morning. Yuck!

I've noticed the same thing with AA schedules. I've had a few of my AA operated flights change recently. I chalked it up to merging schedules and finding efficiencies. Just annoyed my 1 hour layover turned into 4 hrs because they (AA) kept my original flight numbers. I'm sure there is no logic to bump me to the earlier connecting flight. I know a call will remedy.

I think we will be seeing a lot of schedule tweaks in the coming months.