richiemo From United States of America, joined Jul 2008, 195 posts, RR: 0 Posted (1 year 8 months 2 weeks 16 hours ago) and read 6999 times:
Gang - was just looking at AA's routing to Sao Paulo and Rio D. from DFW, JFK and MIA. It appears from the sched that planes leave the US cities late night, arrive in the morn, then sit there all day until doing red eyes back to US. Does this make sense? Why wouldn't they return to US after a few hour layover, and get back to US cities late afternoon, early evening. OR, do these planes fly around to other smaller cities in Brazil or other South American cities from Sao P and Rio D during the day. I can't tell from the AA website. It would seem poor aircraft utilization to have them sit all day. So there must be something I'm missing.
commavia From United States of America, joined Apr 2005, 10188 posts, RR: 62 Reply 1, posted (1 year 8 months 2 weeks 16 hours ago) and read 6983 times:
Quoting richiemo (Thread starter): Gang - was just looking at AA's routing to Sao Paulo and Rio D. from DFW, JFK and MIA. It appears from the sched that planes leave the US cities late night, arrive in the morn, then sit there all day until doing red eyes back to US. Does this make sense? Why wouldn't they return to US after a few hour layover, and get back to US cities late afternoon, early evening. OR, do these planes fly around to other smaller cities in Brazil or other South American cities from Sao P and Rio D during the day. I can't tell from the AA website. It would seem poor aircraft utilization to have them sit all day. So there must be something I'm missing.
This has been discussed many times before. AA's schedules to Brazil (as is the case to virtually all of deep South America) has double redeyes (i.e., redeye southbound, redeye northbound). This goes for AA, and every other U.S. airline. Yields are higher on overnight flights, and while it is poor utilization, the airlines have all decided that the utilization penalty is justified given the yield premium the redeyes can generate. Plus, the airlines don't entirely "waste" the downtime - the planes in many cases get deep cleans and light maintenance.
jfk777 From United States of America, joined Aug 2006, 7342 posts, RR: 7 Reply 2, posted (1 year 8 months 2 weeks 16 hours ago) and read 6965 times:
Quoting commavia (Reply 1): This has been discussed many times before. AA's schedules to Brazil (as is the case to virtually all of deep South America) has double redeyes (i.e., redeye southbound, redeye northbound). This goes for AA, and every other U.S. airline. Yields are higher on overnight flights, and while it is poor utilization, the airlines have all decided that the utilization penalty is justified given the yield premium the redeyes can generate. Plus, the airlines don't entirely "waste" the downtime - the planes in many cases get deep cleans and light maintenance.
Also with late night departures and early morning arrivals connections are maximized at both ends. A flight departing Sao Paulo at high noon and arriving in MIA at 7:00 PM doesn't allow much time for connections.
IrishAyes From United States of America, joined Jan 2008, 1727 posts, RR: 6 Reply 4, posted (1 year 8 months 2 weeks 13 hours ago) and read 6629 times:
Quoting C010T3 (Reply 3): I find it quite amusing that this same question is posted every other month.
...not to mention that AA was singled out here, as well as Brasil, when in fact virtually every major North American carrier does this with their deep south america legs.
in addition, some carriers operate tag-ons to secondary cities to help keep a/c utilization high.
jfk777 From United States of America, joined Aug 2006, 7342 posts, RR: 7 Reply 5, posted (1 year 8 months 2 weeks 10 hours ago) and read 6339 times:
Quoting IrishAyes (Reply 4): not to mention that AA was singled out here, as well as Brasil, when in fact virtually every major North American carrier does this with their deep south america legs
When Varig flew to JFK and Miami their DC-10-30 or 747 those planes got a days worth just of sun too, its not just the planes going to RIO getting a tan.
Acey559 From United States of America, joined Jan 2007, 1338 posts, RR: 2 Reply 7, posted (1 year 8 months 2 weeks 9 hours ago) and read 6185 times:
The schedule does make for quite a nice opportunity for nonrevs to day-trip down to South America. Arriving early and departing late lets us sight see for the whole day and catch the same plane back to the States.
Dellatorre From Brazil, joined May 2000, 1084 posts, RR: 2 Reply 8, posted (1 year 8 months 2 weeks 9 hours ago) and read 6156 times:
Quoting C010T3 (Reply 3): I find it quite amusing that this same question is posted every other month.
Every now and then we get some of these rookie questions.... I have to admit that sometimes I tend to loose my patience over this, but I guess is part of welcoming newbies that don't know how search engine works.....
If we had a ranking with the FAQ, this one would be easily among the top ones.
fxramper From United States of America, joined Dec 2005, 7023 posts, RR: 93 Reply 9, posted (1 year 8 months 1 week 6 days 23 hours ago) and read 4554 times:
What difference does the a/c make when they are banking on all routes to Brazil?
willzzz88 From United States of America, joined May 2011, 95 posts, RR: 0 Reply 10, posted (1 year 8 months 1 week 6 days 18 hours ago) and read 3792 times:
JFK-GRU is like JFK-LHR, overnight is the most profitable.
richiemo From United States of America, joined Jul 2008, 195 posts, RR: 0 Reply 11, posted (1 year 8 months 1 week 6 days 15 hours ago) and read 3189 times:
Rookie questions???? You're kidding right. There are even elitists in the world of airliner blogging. I see repeat questions all the time on our flight sim site and I happily answer them and re-answer them every time. This is a hobby for us airline geeks (to quote John Travolta). It's a place to shoot the sh*#. Sorry, I'll pay more attention in class.
Viscount724 From Switzerland, joined Oct 2006, 21464 posts, RR: 24 Reply 12, posted (1 year 8 months 1 week 5 days 15 hours ago) and read 2675 times:
Quoting IrishAyes (Reply 4): Quoting C010T3 (Reply 3):
I find it quite amusing that this same question is posted every other month.
...not to mention that AA was singled out here, as well as Brasil, when in fact virtually every major North American carrier does this with their deep south america legs.
It's very common on all longhaul routes, especially those that operate north-south. It's much the same between Europe and Africa, since passengers paying the high-yield premium class fares want overnight flights to make their time more productive. Many leisure travellers also prefer red-eye flights to avoid wasting a day of their vacation time.
thegman From United States of America, joined Nov 2008, 606 posts, RR: 0 Reply 13, posted (1 year 8 months 1 week 4 days 16 hours ago) and read 2212 times:
Quoting Acey559 (Reply 7):
The schedule does make for quite a nice opportunity for nonrevs to day-trip down to South America. Arriving early and departing late lets us sight see for the whole day and catch the same plane back to the States.
Except that Brazil requires a visa, and I don't really want to go through all that to make a day trip. Because if I did that, there would be no prior planning at all.
elmothehobo From United States of America, joined Aug 2006, 1515 posts, RR: 1 Reply 14, posted (1 year 8 months 1 week 4 days 13 hours ago) and read 2082 times:
This isn't exclusive to deep South America routes, South Africa to Europe also has a similar schedule. A morning or mid day departure means you lose an entire day of travel. Some people don't mind it, but money talks, and the people sitting up front prefer the overnight flight.
Welcome to A.net, where you can't get a good answer without a snide comment to go along with it. Don't worry, it's a good question, it gets asked a lot though. If you use the search function, it'll give you a treasure trove of results about this, both about American and other carriers. It's worth looking through, there is one thread that shows the difference in load factors between the daylight and overnight flight.
RoseFlyer From United States of America, joined Feb 2004, 8737 posts, RR: 52 Reply 15, posted (1 year 8 months 1 week 4 days 12 hours ago) and read 2006 times:
I'm not sure about AA, but UA uses EZE and GRU for maintenance. EZE does a scheduled maintenance check on the 767 every day. The 763s get a light maintenance check. It is scheduled to take 6 hours. Things like tires, brakes, outstanding deferred items, interior cleaning/repair etc all get worked in EZE during the day time sit. Implementing this change to have maintenance done in EZE helped allow a 767 to be available for the IAD-ACC route.
The reason for the maintenance is exclusively because of fleet utilization. The checks were formally done in IAD. Outsourcing maintenance to EZE did not lower costs. It actually increased them because UA has to pay to ship tires, wheels, brakes, lights, and keep a larger set of spare parts in EZE because they are doing scheduled maintenance. EZE is not a hub for any 767 operator, so UA had to put up money to build the spare parts inventory since items can't be borrowed from a different airline. IAD already has all those parts on hand, so shifting to an outstation with a single daily flight was costly (despite lower pay to mechanics in EZE). UA's 763 3-class fleet now has only 3-4 scheduled periods of downtime over 8 hours that are not part of extensive A, C, etc checks.
If you have never designed an airplane part before, let the real designers do the work!
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