So I have been scheduling routes for planes under 2500nm recently and I have noticed a little dilema. I am running out of "Night flights", referring to flights usually around 1700NM or farther away which allows my plane to skip the bad nights hours, while there is still plenty of demand on flights much shorter flights which fill the rest of the day. Should I keep adding to night flights which are no longer very profitable thanks to oversupply, or should I just forget about the night and schedule planes throughout the day? I usually favour forgetting about the night hours and just squeezing three flights from 6:00-23:00.
I just want to hear how the experienced guys deal with this since I am really learning the value of efficiency in this game.
Thanks!
A problem I have myself with S2000s in MAD. not only I'm short of
red eyes(that's the technical time when you fly long enough to take off in the evening and land in the morning) destinations since a long time, but I'm now short of
sleepover destinations. I don't think you're nearing being short of sleepover destinations.
A good sleepover destination has a 0005 curfews, or even less than that, you land at 2355, you take off at 0500. Of course, it's not as good as a red eyes flight, but IMHO, better have a full sleepover flight than en empty red eyes flight. Red eyes flights are far, therefore costly in fuel, you'd better fill them or avoid them. Giving up a little bit of efficiency to get a lot more revenue always paid up rewards to me. It's even better when you can have both, but when you can't, my choice is always to go to better revenue, at the expense of cost efficiency. Still, think about it : with sleepovers, your bird turns over 305 minutes during the night. In LHR and its 2306 curfew, would be 425 minutes at best(assuming you can get slots at 0600, which is never a given in LHR).
My reasoning is the following one : when your company is profitable, income will be bigger than expenses. Therefore optimizing for income is more rewarding than optimizing for expenses. Not always true, of course, but often enough for bringing rewards.