It is not irrelevant to this thread to note that BA operated the 763 in both a short-haul and long-haul configuration. Indeed the first five frames delivered to BA in early 1990 were all in their short-haul cabin configuration. Further these initial deliveries replaced twin-aisle L-1011s most significantly on the 216 mile LHR-CDG route. Today BA have only seven 763s in service. All are in a short-haul configuration and include two of the first three delivered. These two 26 year old aircraft have each amassed well over 60,000 flying hours.

The seven remaining frames out of a total of 28 delivered operate to a mix of very short-haul destinations like AMS, EDI and FRA and to longer short-haul destinations like ATH, IST and LCA. However their days are numbered, All will be retired before the end of Summer Season 2018. All will be replaced by single aisle A321s.

TK moves around a lot of cargo between IST and their domestic destinations such as ESB, ADB and AYT on their 330's and 77W's.

Two years ago, I had a domestic flight to and from HND to MYJ on the 787 via NH. First time on the 787. I assume domestic use of wide bodies is relatively common in Japan. I've also flown a few NRT to ITM on B777 as well. Unless NH is just shuffling equipment around the flights started and ended at said destinations.

This weekend UA used a 763 on BOS-IAH. Not sure if it was a one-off, but it was FULL!

US never flew scheduled widebody service to SAN.

Domestic cities and a few Caribbean cities over the years at US were, CLT, PHL, PIT, MIA, MCO, SJU, CUN, LAX, SFO, BWI, TPA and BOS.

Recent visit to Phuket island, Thailand saw daily widebody flights between it and Bangkok by Thai using A330, 747, 777-200, 777-300(non ER) 777-300ER, 787... When I say daily each of these types makes an appearance at least once (777s and A330 at least x3) with the exception of the 787 which is usually weekends. The A350 gets a turn too on occasion. There are the odd couple of A320s also.

The flight time is typically 90 minutes and clearly using such equipment works for Thai.

Btblue wrote:

Recent visit to Phuket island, Thailand saw daily widebody flights between it and Bangkok by Thai using A330, 747, 777-200, 777-300(non ER) 777-300ER, 787... When I say daily each of these types makes an appearance at least once (777s and A330 at least x3) with the exception of the 787 which is usually weekends. The A350 gets a turn too on occasion. There are the odd couple of A320s also.

The flight time is typically 90 minutes and clearly using such equipment works for Thai.

I just did that exact trip a few days ago. 772 for BKK-HKT, A333 for the return to Bangkok. To Phuket, J cabin was 1/2 full, Y was easily 3/4 full, return to BKK, J was shy 3 seats of full, didnt see all of Y, but based on people I saw getting on in the terminal, it had to be more than 3/4 full.

UA has announced increased usage of the 777 on the SFO-BOS route.
http://www.routesonline.com/news/38/air ... pril-2017/

Great photos. I almost did a day trip to BKK whilst in HKT but Thai do not allow pre booking of seats on domestic flights so I didn't bother. Wanted to fly the 747 upper deck and 777-300(non ER) and video the takeoff and landing. Not guaranteeing a seat put me off.

Some really interesting aircraft at Phuket - saw the SSJ belonging to the Thai Government, Air Asia A320-neo and a few 737-900ER and lots of Russian charter flights.

The beach is definitely worth a visit too!

DocLightning wrote:

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.

I have recently started operating short-haul routes with a wide body and was quite surprised to find that the turnaround times are no slower than on a narrow body.

You don't need much fuel on a short route, so refueling is very quick. So is boarding/deboarding, especially if 2 aisles/doors are used.

We turn a 313 seat A333 in an hour - and this is an old-style legacy carrier. I am sure that in lo-co style environment, the turnaround time could be 40, or even 30 minutes...

AA300B wrote:

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.

Because many of the long haul flight are scheduled as overnight flights, there is spare capacity during the day. SAA uses this spare wide-body capacity to add extra seats on the route. SAA already operates about 17 flights a day on the route, so the there aren't many extra slots available

Every flight between Shanghai and Beijing is a wide-body flight. Same goes for every flight out of Hong Kong to Taipei and other major mainland cities. (if you subscribe to the One-China policy) W

In SAA's case the widebodies is also to cover some cargo that needs to go to/from CPT, as majority of cargo go via JNB, while the A320/737s don't have that enough cargo capacity or fit into the same space as they arrive in to JNB. At the same time they still carry good loads of passengers, since SAA don't fly international out of CPT, they channel all their traffic through JNB hub...so while international carriers keep expanding and increasing direct CPT service, SAA also carries big loads on to CPT via their JNB hub. JNB-CPT sees at least 3 daily A346/343/332/333, while busier days like Fridays and Sundays and peak holiday periods can have up to 6 or 7 widebodies.
Similarly SAA is starting in March with daily scheduled JNB-Victoria Falls (VFA) A330-200 service, being a regional international flight, which is actually shorter distance than domestic JNB-CPT.

Though totally not domestic flights but short-haul nonetheless, CX's -TPE and -MNL flights, and SQ's -BKK and -KUL flights, among other dozens of destinations are all well below 1200 miles away from their home airport. And both seem to do well on all-widebody fleets. Granted, both airlines have good feed for cargo.

For true short-haul domestic flights, TG, GA, PR, even JT and 5J, also use widebodies... So I have to assume short-haul domestic widebody flights are indeed feasible.

c933103 wrote:

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

you have to wonder with what on a route like HND CTS, 24 777 a day and 37 WB total https://flightaware.com/live/findflight ... ation=RJCC

I'm thinking this is the #1 WB route in the world?

And we all saw how profitable Air Canada was in their most recent quarter as they operated excess WB capacity on routes as short as 250 miles, all the while complaining about overcapacity as their rasm falls faster than their casm, largely due to excess capacity being flown to generate useless asm's to drive unit costs down over the winter.

AC have 4x daily 767-300ER's on YYZ -FLL, a 3 hour sector with walk up fares this week pinned at c$99 , (us$76) + flow through taxes.

Meanwhile, I counted 39 non stops total between NYC airports and FLL tomorrow, (Tues), with one UAL flight selling for c$91 + taxes, and then all the remainder selling for c$331 or more, + taxes. There is ZERO WB capacity between NYC, hubs for all the airlines operating the route, and FLL And it's a longweekend in both the US and Ontario so demand is a wash. There's lots of it to FLL this time of year, so fares shouldn't be at giveaway prices.

And people still wonder how Air Canada managed to lose money in their most recent quarter?

Duh......

nadavatar64 wrote:

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!

The three other long-standing domestic routes with regular widebody service in Canada are YUL-YVR, YHZ-YYZ and YVR-YYZ.

For the first time ever this coming summer YYJ-YYZ sees widebody 763 service.

There have been many other past widebody Canadian regularly scheduled domestic routes (YOW-YVR is the most recent former route), including several others not involving YYZ, but that's all at the present time.

Let's not associate Air Canada's financial results with the usage of wide-bodies in domestic or trans-border routes. That is simply a very small fraction of Air Canada's total capacity and it has a nearly irrelevant effect in a quarter's results. One way or the other.

Last time I flew a domestic route on widebody was in 2015, when I flew on a LAN Boeing 787-9 between SCL and IPC and a LAN Boeing 767-300ER IPC-SCL

In 2013 I flew Vietnam Airlines Airbus 332 between Danang and Hanoi

Other than that, it's been a while since I flew widebody domestic:

2000: Thai Airways Airbus 300-600 between Phuket and Bangkok

1997: KLM Boeing 747-400 between BON and CUR ( continueing to AMS )

1990: American Airlines Airbus 300-600 between JFK and SJU and SJU - MIA

1988: American Airlines DC-10 between DFW and ORD

1988: Aero Mexico DC-10 between MEX and CZM

1988: American Airlines Boeing 767-200 between MCO and DFW

1985: Braathens S.A.F.E Boeing 767-200 between FBU and SVG and SVG and FBU

Birdwatching wrote:

Examples:
Thai BKK-HKT

Indeed, flew that a few years ago and was quite surprised the 744 was completely full, and the 330 on the return was also full. From recollection those flights were exclusively wide-bodies. High demand and few alternatives, at least if you don't have much time to spend on getting from place to place.

Dominion301 wrote:

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

Do the 767 and/or 777 head for Europe after arrival in Alberta? Could be a good way to get the metal to the prairies for the transat runs.

If you look at Asia you'll see so. I believe that the US can do it too, but it isn't very often there.

Recently went EWR-ORD and back, EWR-ORD was on a UA 3 class 777-200 was completely full and on the way back a 3 class 767-300 also completely full. UA does a ton of domestic widebodies. EWR-IAH/ORD/SFO/DEN(winter) ORD-IAH/SFO/EWR/LAX DEN-LAX/SFO

Delta757MD88 wrote:

Recently went EWR-ORD and back, EWR-ORD was on a UA 3 class 777-200 was completely full and on the way back a 3 class 767-300 also completely full. UA does a ton of domestic widebodies. EWR-IAH/ORD/SFO/DEN(winter) ORD-IAH/SFO/EWR/LAX DEN-LAX/SFO

UA must be the leader when it comes to domestic WB flights now that they have dedicated 10 777s for domestic use.

I think we all know the story.

Two A320s or 738s are cheaper to run than one 787. You pay twice as much to pilots, but cabin crew will be more or less the same (one per 50pax), and fuel burn of 787 is nowhere near to 2* fuel burn of 320s/737s. And in most cases, two daily will generate extra income comparing to once daily.

That being said, there are at least two more conditions that might apply to actually reverse the equation. Slots (or airport capacity in general) and cargo. In both cases, it just might turn more economical to fly widebody instead of 320/737. Excellent example is AY831/832.

Cheers,
Adam

YVR-YYZ is also a 787 on the redeye

I'll be taking a Delta A330-300 MSP-HNL in a few weeks -- Definitely booked based on equipment, I'm sure nobody on here has done that before I am honestly surprised we haven't seen an A380 in an all economy configuration plying Asian airspace on some domestic route.

Delta operated many wide body routes from CVG in the early 2000's on the 763/4. I believe the routes were CVG-ATL/BDL/SFO/PDX/SLC/MCO/FLL/PBI/JFK/LAX/LAS/HNL/ANC. I believe CVG-SAN/SEA/BOS/TPA/RSW also saw 763's at various times. Thats quite a lot of domestic wide body flying for a market the size of Cincinnati. Part of it was CVG was a 767 crew base for Delta, so it made sense to operate larger aircraft on some shorter routes like CVG-BDL along with longer routes like CVG-HNL/ANC, which needed a 767.

CVG-BDL always surprised me, Delta operated 2x752, 1x738, and 1x/763 in 2003. Its crazy that the route is down to a single CRJ-900 now.

DaufuskieGuy wrote:

you have to wonder with what on a route like HND CTS, 24 777 a day and 37 WB total https://flightaware.com/live/findflight ... ation=RJCC

I'm thinking this is the #1 WB route in the world?

SHA-PEK have about as much WB in a day.

B747forever wrote:

Delta757MD88 wrote:

Recently went EWR-ORD and back, EWR-ORD was on a UA 3 class 777-200 was completely full and on the way back a 3 class 767-300 also completely full. UA does a ton of domestic widebodies. EWR-IAH/ORD/SFO/DEN(winter) ORD-IAH/SFO/EWR/LAX DEN-LAX/SFO

UA must be the leader when it comes to domestic WB flights now that they have dedicated 10 777s for domestic use.

I think it's actually DL with all their 767s

Hello All,

this is first post on A.net... that being said,
in reference to Anshabhi's question on why AI deployed 787 on DEL--COK...

I have travelled quite frequently on the Frankfurt to Cochin (FRA--> COK) route on Air India via DEL.
the reason Air India deployed the 787 is because the DEL- COK and COK-DEL act as the feeder flights for all passengers from Australia and Europe (including FRA, CDG, LHR etc) who want to fly to Cochin on Air India. Additionally you also have the local traffic TO and FROM DEL.

I have always found it very difficult to rebook the flights because almost everytime there is a change in route because the customer service agents tell me , "Sir, I have seats available on DEL --> FRA or FRA -->DEL sector, but the DEL --> COK or COK--> DEL is sold out. Hence we will have to re -route you through Mumbai (BOM) (only when travelling to COK) or postpone your trip by x number of days, etc etc..

And its also interesting to note that the DEL--> COK flight parks at the international terminal in Cochin before proceeding to its final destination Trivandrum (TRV). This is because all international passengers do their Emigration and customs at COK while landing.
and on its return leg TRV--> COK --> DEL, the fligh parks at the Domestic Terminal and the passengers do their immigration /customs at DEL when they fly out.
interesting, isn't it?

Qantas used to turn their 767s in 40 minutes, and that was a legacy carrier with cleaning, catering and the standard L1 boarding door. An LCC with aft boarding could probably turn a wide body in 30 minutes. The nature of the two aisles means that a wide body can be quicker to unload and board than a single aisle, as the number of seats per aisle is lower.

shankly wrote:

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

Indeed they do but both types are optimised for long haul. South Africa - Europe flights all leave at night so SA use the aircrafts' downtime during the day to do JNB-CPT rotations. Back in the mid 70's SAA had A300's flying the JNB-CPT and JNB-DUR routes and when they were withdrawn and replaced with 738's, supposedly to operate every half an hour, frequency might have improved but a lot of cargo was forced onto the roads. I flew a lot on the A300's domestically and the early morning and evening flights were pretty much full.

gloom wrote:

I think we all know the story.

Two A320s or 738s are cheaper to run than one 787. You pay twice as much to pilots, but cabin crew will be more or less the same (one per 50pax), and fuel burn of 787 is nowhere near to 2* fuel burn of 320s/737s. And in most cases, two daily will generate extra income comparing to once daily.

That being said, there are at least two more conditions that might apply to actually reverse the equation. Slots (or airport capacity in general) and cargo. In both cases, it just might turn more economical to fly widebody instead of 320/737. Excellent example is AY831/832.

Cheers,
Adam

Is it really though? A better comparison would be an A330 Regional since that's the closest aircraft flying now designed for domestic flying. There really is no replacement for the 767s,L1011s and DC10s that flew domestically in the USA.

CF-CPI wrote:

Dominion301 wrote:

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

Do the 767 and/or 777 head for Europe after arrival in Alberta? Could be a good way to get the metal to the prairies for the transat runs.

The 77W only shows up in AC's schedule in one direction. AC's summer schedule is definitely not finalized. As for international turns, for YEG definitely no as AC no longer fly YEG-LHR. The YYZ-YYC 763s are definitely turns as well.

A lot of YUL Rapidair widebodies and almost all YOW Rapidairs are to rotate the aircraft to/from international flights.

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.

Bingo! The 767-200 & 300 was the last widebody designed for domestic flying and was successful in that role. But when an A321 can carry almost the same amount of pax as a 767-200, one can see why the A321 is popular.

The 767 replacement/ MOM aircraft from Boeing is in essence a trans Atlantic plane. Not for domestic flying.

Makes sense to use re-positioning flights as revenue flights. Make a few dollars instead of flying empty.

I believe that Boeing offered a shorter-range version of the 787, the 787-3, which had a smaller wingspan. However, I seem to recall that only a few Asian carriers ordered that version. So, the version was dropped while still in the design stage.

william wrote:

A better comparison would be an A330 Regional since that's the closest aircraft flying now designed for domestic flying. There really is no replacement for the 767s,L1011s and DC10s that flew domestically in the USA.

BADA (by Eurocontrol, which should be more-or-less accurate) says about cruise consumption:
A330 at low mass (143,4t): estimated at 80 kg per min, at F380;
A320 at low mass (50.2t): estimated at 34 kg per min at F380.

It's quite clear since A330 is much more than twice the mass of A320.

Unfortunately, I have no access to FliteStar or similar to compare on real profile mission. Still, the difference seems more than possible error.

Cheers, Adam

aemoreira1981 wrote:

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.

Yep, Aeroflot uses A330 and 777 between SVO and VVO.

Don't know if it's been mentioned, but BA regularly operate a 763ER on the EDI-LHR-EDI shuttle service, generally one of the first flights out. Always packed. They seem to make money with it. On occasion they send a 777.

incitatus wrote:

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.

I wrote my initial post thinking AI deployed the 787's on DEL--> COK for the their evening service AI148. But I stand corrected.
AI deployed this aircraft on their morning flight because they have started COK--> DXB service with 787. AI933 departs COK at 9.15 local time and returns to COK at 18:50 and proceeds to proceeds to DEL at 20:20 hrs as AI 148.

AI 787s have bases only in DEL and BOM.