Scheduling / Time of flight

[sfonline]

Hi all,

just got started with my airline Canadian West and it's quite fun so far. One question:

I know that there are stats for daily passenger demand. In real world also the time of flight makes changes to the demand, e.g. on short commuter routes a flight at 0800 would have a higher demand than at 1200 or even 0100 at night.

Is this taken into account within AWS?

In my schedule I have only two destinations ex CYYC with several connections a day and I'm wondering why load factors vary up to 12% although there are same turnaround times and ticket prices.

Thanks for your help,

Stefan

[Sami]

The flight times DO affect the pax amounts. Among other variables.

[woober]

As mentioned before, the best time to schedules flights is from 06-10 and 14-20 as in real life 

[sfonline]

OK, good to know

I did not pay much attention to time of flight but rather try to keep the aircraft in the air as much as possible (except some higher turnaround times to avoid delays). This means I also have a flight departing at 0000 to an airport that is opened overnight and I think as long as it makes profit it is better than keeping aircraft on ground.

Stefan

[Sami]

At this point when there is no competition running the night flights may very well work actually (as people don't have other choices). But when the routes get crowded flying at these poor hours gives you nothing but expenses.

[thetallone24]

Sami has made a valid point. But, as he mentioned, you can do well with night flights
provided there is enough demand, but little competiton.

For example, I run a LHR-AGP-LHR service which leaves around 11pm and doesn't get back to LHR until 06:05, but
it is now proving really popular, even in C class, albeit it took twice as long to gather pace than the other routes, but
better to get more profit from the aircraft than just park it up for the night!

[Kastor]

I am alone on one route and have two rotations - morning and overnight. Overnight has better LF than the rotation that is scheduled at the times commonly considered as the best.