South West Airlines

wrote:


I don't notice them loading particularly faster, if anything
it's slower. What I do notice is they seem to have virtually
no connecting passengers. All of their passengers are ready
and waiting when the plane arrives.

This isn't the perception I get from "Airline" where it seems a lot of
WN passengers not only show up late, but show up drunk.

"Robert J Carpenter" wrote in message
...



The scheduled turn-around time does.

No it doesn't. The gate-to-gate time includes those factors.

I am not discussing airport semantics.

I am discussing whether assigned check-in, speeds
up the *total* time lost between useful flight time.

It is irrelevent what the name for it is.

I am referring to it as turn-around time.

If you want to use a different name for it then fine.
But please address the point that I made and stop
nit-picking over the name that I used for it

If you spend 10 minutes holding before you can land
and then 20 minutes waiting for a take-off slot (because you
landed late) you can't schedule 20 min turn-around times all
through the day as you will end up not completeing your
rota.

Yes you can, IF you pad the gate-to-gate times for the delays that
your experience tells you will exist. For example, at DCA at 0700
local, you can expect 14 to 17 minutes between leaving the gate and
being airborne.

I note that airline schedules these days often allow a half hour
or
more of taxi time in their schedule, it depends on their
experience
with each airport.

You can call it waiting time if you wish, but for SWA (or
anybody else) to achieve an extra turn per day from their
plane(s) this period has to be zero. As soon as you lose
20-30 minutes at every turn-around you're stuffed, however
quicky you can get the pax down the aisles.

If other airlines take close to an hour with their aircraft sitting at
the gate and WN takes 20 minutes, WN may be able to get an extra
flight in per day.

But they have cut out the contingency that exists in a
longer waiting time. On a good day they will run to
schedual, on a bad day they will end up running out
of time for the last turn and have to cancel it.

All airlines will have about the same gate-to-gate
times, they have little control over them.

Airline Gate-to-gate time Time at gate Total
ZZ 1.5 hours 1 hour 2.5 hours
WN 1.5 hours 0.33 hours 1.83 hours

Do this 7 times in a day , and
Airline Total for 7 flights
ZZ 17.5 hours
WN 12.8 hours
so WN would have 4.7 hours to use for other flights.

I am perfectly capable of working out the maths thank you.

My point is that if an airline scheduals a flight time of
1:30 plus 30 minutes at the a gate, for a flight that takes
1.10 in the air, they will be well and truly stuffed if they
have a delayed landing or departure, as they have no
contingency.

Now, I am in Europe, I fly Ryanair and Easyjet who
do schedual their flighst like that and maybe I have
wrongly assumed that SWA do likewise. But if they
do, then ISTM the ONLY reason that they can manage
to keep to this schedual is because they fly to/from
airports that have minimal landing and take off delays,
the fact that they load the plane in 15 minutes forms no
part at all in them saving time at turn-around.

tim

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"tim \(moved to sweden\)" wrote:

"Robert J Carpenter" wrote in message
...

"tim (moved to sweden)" wrote in
message ...

Nope, it's the amount of time that they spend holding (or not)
waiting for a landing or take-off slot that dictates the turn-around
time of the aircraft that an airline can achieve.

Turnaround time does not include ANY of those factors. It is strictly
counted from when the aircraft pulls up to the gate until it is ready
to back away from the gate.

The scheduled turn-around time does.

If you spend 10 minutes holding before you can land
and then 20 minutes waiting for a take-off slot (because you
landed late) you can't schedule 20 min turn-around times all
through the day as you will end up not completeing your
rota.


This is the telling lack though. In the UK, you have to hold in
that pattern before landing, because you can only have one aircraft on
the final approach and landing at one time. In the US, you can have
multiple aircraft in on final and cleared to land. So there wouldn't be
any time spent in a holding pattern. In SWA's case, they get their
landing clearance at LAX some 15 miles out on 24R, being #5 in line to
land, taxi to their gate (terminal 1), park, get the pax off, load more
on, push back, get to 24L, and are gone within 15 - 20 minutes. Terminal
1 is the closest terminal to any of the runways. That is the only reason
why SWA can do that at LAX, and one of the reasons why they fly to LAX.
The C gates are nearly the same at LAS, and has the most taxiways
connecting to the ramp there.

I note that airline schedules these days often allow a half hour or
more of taxi time in their schedule, it depends on their experience
with each airport.

You can call it waiting time if you wish, but for SWA (or
anybody else) to achieve an extra turn per day from their
plane(s) this period has to be zero. As soon as you lose
20-30 minutes at every turn-around you're stuffed, however
quicky you can get the pax down the aisles.

I just flew to SMF from SAN last night. The plane we were using
came in from LAS. The time that the plane had parked with engines off
to the time the plane had pushed back for heading back out was 16
minutes. We pushed out of gate 1, Terminal 1 (closest commercial
terminal to runway 27, which was in use).

BL.
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