Jshank83 wrote:RAM787 wrote:ncflyer wrote:I purposely booked a RDU bDL flight over other airlines because it was a single flight number stop in BWI. And yet still had to change planes, long B to C connection (same crew). Yet another example of the decline in WN, highly misleading.
Unfortunately things like that happen, they're rare but they do. Network planning probably decided that plane was better off staying in BWI maybe due to scheduled maintenance.
I would guess it didn't stay in BWI. Although, like you say, there is a chance it did.
I was on a flight a month or so ago. The inbound to my location had the same number as my outbound. Inbound was delayed probably 45 minutes and they did a plane swap. Both planes kept going they were just swapped for some reason. Maybe they wanted my flight to be more on time than the one it got swapped with? We all could load and just wait for the passengers from the original plane to come over. Felt bad for them thinking they would get their choice of seats then got the last seats available. I guess we ended up with a different crew than the previous leg.
But also like RAM says, I think that isn't something that happens often.
While I agree that it’s not real common, I think it does happen more than in the simplest examples. I wish someone with dispatch experience would chime in, but I believe they consider far more than plane repair and simple aircraft delays. I’ve been told that crew time, how close they are to timing out, minimizing down stream disruption, and even sometimes flight loads come into play. They will take an on-time flight and delay it in order to keep another flight(s) viable crew if all it means is delaying another. I might not have the details quite right, but deciding what outbound flight gets delayed, especially passing at a busy station, is more complex than which one is coming in late. Swaps for mx for one flight can domino onto other flights with a goal of completing as much of the schedule as possible.
