In India aviation thread, kitplane01 and atal17 made some really good points on AI's new DEL-COK, 1200 miles B787 route. One point of kitplane01 was:

but I bet that the 72 extra seats on a 787 cost just as much as 150 seats on a A320. One reason I don't have any numbers is that people don't publish the CASM of 787 on 1,200 mile flights because it was not intended to be use on 1,200 mile flights, and only a very few airlines would do that.

(apart from other very nice points) This gets me wondering, are these widebodies on domestic routes really feasible? We have 2 threads viewtopic.php?t=1336493 and viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1350779 which shows the practice is quiet common around the world. So, are they feasible?

anshabhi wrote:

In India aviation thread, kitplane01 and atal17 made some really good points on AI's new DEL-COK, 1200 miles B787 route. One point of kitplane01 was:

but I bet that the 72 extra seats on a 787 cost just as much as 150 seats on a A320. One reason I don't have any numbers is that people don't publish the CASM of 787 on 1,200 mile flights because it was not intended to be use on 1,200 mile flights, and only a very few airlines would do that.

(apart from other very nice points) This gets me wondering, are these widebodies on domestic routes really feasible? We have 2 threads viewtopic.php?t=1336493 and viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1350779 which shows the practice is quiet common around the world. So, are they feasible?

If they are quite common they must be feasible. The real question is are they profitable and the best use of the equipment assets.

The ultimate one is/was the 747 commuter plane to Tokyo as I recall.But people do seem to over concentrate on the ultimate range of aircraft.If 2 major cities that require a load of traffic happen to be relatively close to each other then why not?You don't have to 'brim the tanks' just because you can!

I'm looking forward to my DFW-LAX 787 and LAX-DEN 777 trips...... can't wait for those!

They seems to be in a lot of 'heavy' markets in some countries...

Regular widebodies in australia, particularly the continental flights to and from Perth. Wasn't long ago that one of those services was an aging 743. Now they're all A330.

Qantas also uses the A330 for additional capacity during the peak hours for SYD MEL and BNE.

The 767s with Qantas and Ansett got a massive workout on domestic routes back in the day. Every half hour in each direction between SYD and MEL from 6am until 8/8:30pm. Every hour (ish) to between SYD and BNE (and vv - with a 737 every hour making it a half hour service). The transcons between SYD/MEL/BNE and PER as well as routes like SYD-CNS, BNE-CNS, SYD-DRW, BNE-DRW, ADL-DRW and even SYD-OOL (OOL stopped in '01 or so). Heck they even had a 763 on a morning MEL-CBR rotation as recently as 2013/2014.

As redroo says the widebodies are now mostly on the PER routes.

However, there are a handful on SYD-BNE and a decent scattering on SYD-MEL in particular in the morning and afternoon. Qantas has in recently got better at upping their aircraft utilization - rather than having a A330-300 which has come into SYD on an overnight from Asia hang around at the jetbase all morning - they are now pushing them on a quick SYD-MEL-SYD rotation (usually the 7:30 or 8am departure out of Sydney) and have it sat back at the international terminal in SYD for a mid afternoon departure back to Asia.

Plus you need to consider that many domestic widebody flights in the US serve a main purpose of a revenue repositioning flight between hubs.

BA regularly use a wide body on LHR-EDI. Usually the aircraft overnights and does the first EDI LHR departure the following morning.

BA use the 767 LHR-EDI
Air Europa A330 MAD-BCN
Swiss 777 ZRH-GVA - not sure if this is long term for training but certainly seems to be on going at the moment
so if the need and volume of passengers and/or cargo is there, why not it make perfect sense rather than have a plane sitting around

Lufaom / Redroo
I think you'll find SYD-BNE is exclusively 738 these days, no A330s anymore unfortunately on this route.

Another one that always has me thinking is South African CPT - JNB on an A346 and A332, considering they have a decent amount of narrow bodies, why are they deploying these aircraft on such a short domestic route.

n729pa wrote:

Lufaom / Redroo
I think you'll find SYD-BNE is exclusively 738 these days, no A330s anymore unfortunately on this route.

This past August I flew on a A330 between SYD-BNE. Might have changed now for W17.

In the past I have also flown the 744ER on the BNE-SYD sector of the old DFW-BNE-SYD before the A380 was put on the route.

The Swiss 77W from ZRH to GVA is just for training purposes and should actually disappear in due time. It does happen occasionally though that they send a widebody a/c (usually an A330-300) from ZRH to GVA because previous flights have been cancelled ...

B747forever wrote:

n729pa wrote:

Lufaom / Redroo
I think you'll find SYD-BNE is exclusively 738 these days, no A330s anymore unfortunately on this route.

This past August I flew on a A330 between SYD-BNE. Might have changed now for W17.

In the past I have also flown the 744ER on the BNE-SYD sector of the old DFW-BNE-SYD before the A380 was put on the route.

SYD-BNE still see the odd A332

Tons of Chinese and Japanese domestic routes are flown by wide bodies, I can't see why there are any possibility for this to be not feasible

I flew on a full AA A330-200 MCO-PHL earlier this month.

Daily 12:05 Orlando (MCO) 14:24 Philadelphia (PHL)
British Airways BA 6740 Non-stop Airbus A330-200 (332) 2:19 Effective 2016-12-26 through 2017-01-08
Codeshare flight, operated by American Airlines.(AA 1728)
http://info.flightmapper.net/route/Brit ... e=2017-1-6

The biggest issue is that Airbus and Boeing no longer make widebodies optimized for short sectors. Airlines have focused on maximizing usage on longer sectors and thus they no longer ask for models optimized for short haul. Unless I am mistaken the 747-400D was the last short haul optimized model.

A 777 variant was supposed to include a short haul model with reduced wingspan to fit a DC10 gate, .

Strictly from an operating cost perspective, 2 narrow-bodies are cheaper to operate than 1 wide-body, where feasible. However sometimes the demand is so great that a narrow-body just won't be enough. The main reason why the 2x NB is cheaper has been alluded to: Today's wide-body aircraft are too optimized for long haul and thus are too heavy for short haul. In addition, generally speaking people don't carry a lot of luggage on short haul routes so the airline is burning fuel to carry a whole lot of empty space under the seats. The you have labor costs. Wide-body crews tend to be more senior and thus are more expensive to the airline. Of course it goes without saying, that these and many other factors differ from airline to airline.

redroo wrote:

Regular widebodies in australia, particularly the continental flights to and from Perth. Wasn't long ago that one of those services was an aging 743. Now they're all A330.

Qantas also uses the A330 for additional capacity during the peak hours for SYD MEL and BNE.

QF will operate a 744 on QF583 SYD-PER next Wednesday (25/1) and QF568 PER-SYD (Thursday 26/1). In between those 2 flights it will operate a sightseeing charter flight (technically its still classed as a domestic flight)

In the US, certain domestic routes aren't feasible without widebodies, like east of the Rockies to Hawaii.

You also have hub to hub repositioning flights to rotate aircraft for maintenance, flights that serve as capacity spares to help facilitate passenger traffic between the two hubs in cases of irregular operations, and domestic routes with so much demand during parts of the year that a widebody can be filled to the brim (think flights from the Northeast US to Florida and Puerto Rico during the Winter).

United recently converted 10 777-200 to a domestic seating configuration with no lay flat seating. These are primarily used between hubs but have also seen use on routes such as SFO-BOS and EWR-SJU.

Let's not forget that shorter stage lengths means more cycles over time which means shorter engine life. Overhauls and life-limited parts are very expensive especially on widebodies. Not saying that domestic widebodies aren't economical, it's just another thing to think about.

This is a question that deserves a lot of qualification in an answer.

The thread starter asked about Air India. Air India bought 787s to fly long-hauls. As such, it specified the airplane for such missions with 9 lavs, crew rests, large galley that can hold multiple meals and premium 74-in pitch for business class. AI can still use the plane for shorter missions, but at 256 seats with the additional weight of the long-haul configuration, it is not going to be as efficient as an A321 on a per seat basis. In between the long-haul trips the 787s will still have some down time, and scheduling them incrementally in shorter routes at busy times makes sense financially: AI can fly more shorter routes without buying more narrow bodies.

If AI had in mind a regional/domestic mission for the 787, it would have configured them differently. Jetstar for example, seats 335 in a 788. It has 6 lavs and smaller galley than AI's. Such a configuration would put the 787 in a very attractive cost per seat compared to the A321. An airline that consistently fills the additional seats and draws cargo revenue can make more money with such a 787 as opposed to an A321. For AI dealing with dual hubs BOM/DEL, limited size and strong foreign competition, a regional 787 might struggle. In Japan, high volumes and less competition work for ANA which seats almost 400 in a 789.

Would it also depend on the size of the country? For example in the United States a domestic flight could be up to 10 hours (EWR to HNL) and many flights are between 4 to 6 hours (SEA to MIA) long.

flyingcat wrote:

The biggest issue is that Airbus and Boeing no longer make widebodies optimized for short sectors. Airlines have focused on maximizing usage on longer sectors and thus they no longer ask for models optimized for short haul. Unless I am mistaken the 747-400D was the last short haul optimized model.

A 777 variant was supposed to include a short haul model with reduced wingspan to fit a DC10 gate, .

Naturally the larger the plane, the longer the range. But that added isle adds weight. About 35 to 40% on a widebody per passenger. Because of this, cargo must pay the added costs over the A321. If cargo doesn't pay, the multiple narrowbodies. For example, early morning LAX-DFW, there are an amazing number of flights. One widebody for utilization/lie flat seats in about 8 flights.

A widebody just won't be as economical.

Lightsaber

AR uses the A330 and A340 in EZE-USH.

airbazar wrote:

Strictly from an operating cost perspective, 2 narrow-bodies are cheaper to operate than 1 wide-body, where feasible. However sometimes the demand is so great that a narrow-body just won't be enough. The main reason why the 2x NB is cheaper has been alluded to: Today's wide-body aircraft are too optimized for long haul and thus are too heavy for short haul. In addition, generally speaking people don't carry a lot of luggage on short haul routes so the airline is burning fuel to carry a whole lot of empty space under the seats. The you have labor costs. Wide-body crews tend to be more senior and thus are more expensive to the airline. Of course it goes without saying, that these and many other factors differ from airline to airline.

The best way to see the big picture is to see how huge the backlog for narrow bodies is relative to wide bodies.

The days of drawing all the customers to the key hubs and then flying them in wide bodies everywhere have largely ended.

Depends really...sometimes these short-hauls are tacked onto longer hauls, such as Mumbai to Delhi...the plane may then continue onto New York nonstop. However, in the USA, wide-bodies are generally valuable on routes from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco (i.e., Delta offers its Delta One international business class on this route, and United uses its long-haul product on this city pair). American flies narrow-body A321 on this pair, but using a 4-class A321 (F10J20W36Y36). Wide-bodies also get used in the USA domestically to Hawaii when traveling farther east than the West Coast of the USA.

In China, they're also needed on some domestic routes because slots are not available (IINM, China Southern has a short A380 route).

flyingcat wrote:

The biggest issue is that Airbus and Boeing no longer make widebodies optimized for short sectors. Airlines have focused on maximizing usage on longer sectors and thus they no longer ask for models optimized for short haul. Unless I am mistaken the 747-400D was the last short haul optimized model.

A 777 variant was supposed to include a short haul model with reduced wingspan to fit a DC10 gate, .

yet 777 are flying on routes which 744D used to fly. Although they will also be retired

Flying in Saudi Arabia during hadsch is always a pleasure. Saudia will throw everything in the ring which has wings. DMM to JED during hadsch on a WB is very common.

In general, widebodies cost more money per seat, and are not more fuel efficient than maximum narrowbodies.

The only cost economy that widebodies have is 1 cockpit crew vs. 2 crews for a pair of narrowbodies. And airport slots, if applicable.

In the USA for example, domestic widebodies are not cost competitive with narrowbodies. They are just repositioning flights or utilization flying.

Also, at least in the US, airlines will put wide-bodies on seasonal routes,,,

MSP-CUN A333
MSP-MCO B767

In Canada, AC use widebodies daily on many of the 1hr-1hr20 YYZ-YOW/YUL Rapidair runs. YOW gets the 763, while YUL mostly gets 333s. Both routes also see 787s and 77W from time-to-time, especially YUL.

n729pa wrote:

BA use the 767 LHR-EDI.

I took this early morning flight once, it was super empty!

dfwjim1 wrote:

Would it also depend on the size of the country? For example in the United States a domestic flight could be up to 10 hours (EWR to HNL) and many flights are between 4 to 6 hours (SEA to MIA) long.

Exactly, the size of the mainland and the distance of any outlying areas from the mainland are both pertinent to the length of a domestic flight. RUN-CDG is like 11 hours but still technically domestic!

But yeah, most of the time there is a short flight with a widebody, it's a repositioning flight.

anshabhi wrote:

In India aviation thread, kitplane01 and atal17 made some really good points on AI's new DEL-COK, 1200 miles B787 route. One point of kitplane01 was:

but I bet that the 72 extra seats on a 787 cost just as much as 150 seats on a A320. One reason I don't have any numbers is that people don't publish the CASM of 787 on 1,200 mile flights because it was not intended to be use on 1,200 mile flights, and only a very few airlines would do that.

(apart from other very nice points) This gets me wondering, are these widebodies on domestic routes really feasible? We have 2 threads viewtopic.php?t=1336493 and viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1350779 which shows the practice is quiet common around the world. So, are they feasible?

Thanks for the shout-out.

I *don't* think these routes are quite common. Maybe there are a thousand of routes that are both high traffic and short distance. If 5% are serviced by a wide body, that means both there are 50 such routes one can find, and that most airlines choose to instead use multiple narrow body aircraft.

Flighty wrote:

In general, widebodies cost more money per seat, and are not more fuel efficient than maximum narrowbodies.

The only cost economy that widebodies have is 1 cockpit crew vs. 2 crews for a pair of narrowbodies. And airport slots, if applicable.

In the USA for example, domestic widebodies are not cost competitive with narrowbodies. They are just repositioning flights or utilization flying.

Or if the airport is slot-restricted, which applies to JFK in New York---one of only 3 airports in the USA (LGA and DCA are the other two) with FAA-imposed slot restrictions. Since you can't increase frequencies, you need to increase the size of the planes. This is why from JFK to LAX and JFK to SFO, Delta flies wide-bodies or ex-TWA 757s.

As for domestic, it needs to be defined. Air France, as someone has said before, needs wide-bodies for routes to its overseas departments (Air France flies 468-seat 77Ws to its Caribbean and Indian Ocean overseas departments or 275-seat A340s to smaller overseas departments, depending on whether the route is from CDG or ORY, and British Airways needs them to the Caribbean overseas territories and Bermuda (although an A321neoLR could work to Bermuda). Russia needs wide-bodies for routes between Moscow and Vladivostok; Transaero before it shut down employed non-ER 773s between those two cities. Likewise, in the USA, JFK or EWR to HNL must use a wide-body (UA uses an 764 while HA uses a 332).

BTW, someone mentioned LHR-EDI---might BA's 767 utilization depend on the cargo needs? It seems as though the one-class 767s always fly with a full belly cargo load.

If a widebody is payed for then it might work.

Until a few years ago, AA/US regularly flew 767-200s on JFK-MIA, CLT-MCO, SAN-JFK, and I believe SAN-CLT. J seats were sold as Y seats on SAN-JFK and yet somehow AA was still able to make money.

anshabhi wrote:

In I[url=https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=19301751#p19301751"](apart from other very nice points) This gets me wondering, are these widebodies on domestic routes really feasible? We have 2 threads viewtopic.php?t=1336493 and viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1350779 which shows the practice is quiet common around the world. So, are they feasible?

These are 2 different debates actually.

For purely domestic/regional use, the 787 is over-engineered and a waste of an expensive asset. A 787/777 is happiest doing 8-14 hour long flights. But to schedule domestic/regional runs on a 77W/787 in between long hauls as Air India is doing maximises the utilization of the frame.

Is there potential for widebodies on domestic routes, especially in India? Certainly. We did it in the 1970s (admittedly a different era) and the overcrowded skies over India right now makes it an option to consider. But for that we need aircraft manufacturers to consider a regional widebody, ~300-350 seats and optimised for flight-segments between 2-6 hours with correspondingly higher cycles. Discussed viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1351465.

WS uses a 76W on YYC-YYZ occasionally as well.

jetskipper wrote:

United recently converted 10 777-200 to a domestic seating configuration with no lay flat seating. These are primarily used between hubs but have also seen use on routes such as SFO-BOS and EWR-SJU.

On the contrary, they do have lie flats. Rode in one on a HNL-LAX flight not long after the reconfig.

77H

aemoreira1981 wrote:

Russia needs wide-bodies for routes between Moscow and Vladivostok; Transaero before it shut down employed non-ER 773s between those two cities.

I thought there're Tu-204 service between them (although they might not have the cost benefits of other narrow body)

In this PDF discussing 757 replacement published in 2005 (http://www.aircraft-commerce.com/sample ... sample.pdf) : It seems like on 1000nm sector, an A330-200 or a hypothetical 787-3 would have similar CASM as a 737-700
The analysis does indeed also shows that a hypothetical 787-3 would cost twice as much as a 150-seat A320 to run such a route but it assumed the 787-3 to be fit with 289 seats.
Air India's 788 have 238 economy seats and 18 lie flat business seat, while AIr India's 320 have 120 economy seats and 20 business seats, or 168 economy seats. Note that those 180 degree lie flat business seat take up almost twice as much space as those recliner business seats on their 320. Thus if you compare the available seat of two 320 with a 787, you can see the amount of economy seats is about the same, and the amount of business seats available is halved but each of those business seats get almost double the amount of space. Thus 1*787 provide nearly identical amount of seats as 2*320. Thus if 787 cost about twice as much to operate compare to a 320, the cost per seat would roughly stay the same, but Air India might need to find a way to price their lie flat business class seat on their 787 higher than regular shirt haul business seat in order to capitalize on the considerably larger business class seat on 787, or if they are to use some 787 dedicatedly on short haul route then they could also use more regular business class seat on 787 for better yield

SV runs 777's all the time between JED and DMM. It's not just in the Hajj time.

c933103 wrote:

aemoreira1981 wrote:

Russia needs wide-bodies for routes between Moscow and Vladivostok; Transaero before it shut down employed non-ER 773s between those two cities.

I thought there're Tu-204 service between them (although they might not have the cost benefits of other narrow body)

There may have been in the past, but it's an A330 nowadays. But Russia is a big country, so domestic can be quite long haul.

Dominion301 wrote:

In Canada, AC use widebodies daily on many of the 1hr-1hr20 YYZ-YOW/YUL Rapidair runs. YOW gets the 763, while YUL mostly gets 333s. Both routes also see 787s and 77W from time-to-time, especially YUL.

I also saw this summer YYZ-YYC gets 77W from AC and YYZ-YEG gets 767, nice for Alberta!

SAA uses its A330's and A340's on the JNB - CPT rotation

Widebodies on short flights are not only used for repositioning, high demand or slot restrictions. An important reason in many of the cases mentioned above is the utilization of the frame between long haul flights. It's impossible to have widebodies in the air on long hauls 24 hours a day, so you always have a couple of hours on the ground in between. In cases where a high volume domestic market exists with a short (like 1 hour) distance, why not use the aircraft on a domestic flight in between.

Examples:
Thai BKK-HKT
Saudia JED-RUH
South African CPT-JNB
Air India DEL-BOM

Well, first of all, there's domestic (JFK-ORD) and then there's domestic (JFK-HNL). On the latter, a widebody is the only option as no narrowbody has the range.

For short-haul routes, part of the calculus is the amount of time it takes to turn the airplane. A larger widebody can take quite a time to unload and load, while a smaller narrowbody can turn quite quickly. Every minute that plane is parked at the gate is a minute that the airplane is not making money. So it doesn't make sense to fly an A330 from ORD to JFK since the time at the gate is likely to be longer than the flight but it makes perfect sense to fly that same A330 from JFK to SFO or even HNL.

Now, of course, if the alternative is to have that A330 sit at JFK for six hours, then maybe a quick turn to ORD makes sense. So it really depends on a number of factors