After doing a good bit of spotting at DCA lately, I feel like I'm noticing a pattern that CO and AA do not brings 757s in there while DL/NW, UA and I believe US does. I notice that AA seems to run a lot of 738s in there, but I'd imagine that their feed from ORD and/or DFW could probably fill a 757 couldn't it-- and likewise for CO at least from IAH if not EWR? CO especially seems to run Q400s and 735s into DCA mostly, which seems like a lot less capcacity than most of the other legacies there.

AA and especially CO have found other uses (TATL/LatAm) for the 757 then increasing capacity at DCA. DCA is a market where a smaller shell size could actually be an advantage, less seats in a higher demand market can drive up the fare premium.

In a very wild guess I would probably say it has something to do with frequency i.e. in that both CO and AA would both rather have more flights with smaller equipment. CO only have 41 757-200, much less than some of the other major American carriers, and quite a few of these are tied up operating trans-atlantic flights from EWR.

From what I've heard before on this forum, UA are definitely the dominant carrier on the DC to Chicago market, much larger than AA, so that would explain why they bring in 757's for their ORD flights. Out of their 15 non-stop DCA-ORD flights, 3 of them are with the 752, the 13:38, 14:38 and the 16:48. In comparison, AA only has 10 DCA-ORD flights, and many of them are on RJ's, whereas every single one of UA's flights are on mainline equipment, A-319's, A-320's, 737-300's, 757-200's etc.

[Edited 2009-07-19 15:46:11]

Since DCA is a business-driven airport, smaller airplanes with more frequency make the most sense there.

And for CO, the 739 would be a much better choice than the 757 if they needed extra capacity.

-Mir

Quoting Mir (Reply 3): And for CO, the 739 would be a much better choice than the 757 if they needed extra capacity.

That's right, I forgot about CO having the 739s. Do they send those to DCA?

CO puts mostly 73G's and a few 738's to IAH. The one EWR mainline flight seems to bounce between 500 and 700 with an occasional 300. I don't believe the 900As or ERs can actually be dispatched into DCA right now.

I may be mistaken, but I do not see any AA RJs on ORD-DCA, I only see MD-80s and now more and more 738s. I fly on both AA and UA out of DCA all of the time and I used to prefer the UA 757s, but now with AA's brand new 738s they are using, I definitely prefer them.

It depends largely on season and schedule. AA has flown 757s into DCA on and off for years. They were used fairly consistently on DFW and MIA for a long time, up until recently, and now you do still see one appear in the schedules to DFW or MIA every once in a while. But, generally, AA does - as another poster suggested - prefer smaller planes and higher frequency, especially on both those routes (DFW and MIA), which are huge for AA.

Quoting Md94 (Reply 6): I may be mistaken, but I do not see any AA RJs on ORD-DCA, I only see MD-80s and now more and more 738s.

They're there.

After they got rid of the Fokkers, AA has struggled to make 140-seat MD80s only work on ORD-DCA, and has been slowly transitioning more and more of the flights to Eagle. As of today, half the schedule - 5 flights - are CRJs, and the rest are a mix of MD80s and 737s.

Quoting Md94 (Reply 6): I fly on both AA and UA out of DCA all of the time and I used to prefer the UA 757s, but now with AA's brand new 738s they are using, I definitely prefer them.

Yeah, the 737s are nice. And as more and more start going to Chicago, you may well see more and more on DCA-ORD.