is non-stop always better?

[jezbanks]

Consider two airlines both flying the same route, one using piston props the other using a jet.

The piston airliner departs at 1450 and arrives at 2130 - but no tech stop.
The jet departs at 1700 and arrives (even with a technical stop for fuel) at 2050.

By any normal rational choice the passenger would choose the Jet flight.

But in AWS do they?

[schro]

I opened this bug report back in 2013 - https://www.airwaysim.com/forum/index.php/topic,48584.0.html

It was allegedly fixed in 2017, but I'm not entirely sure what was fixed.

[jezbanks]

hmmm

ta for the link though

[Talentz]

To answer your question:

"Is non-stop always better?"

No. At some point the Jet vs Prop question turns into which is more cost effective. At that point Pax distribution between the two doesn't matter as much. There are a number of factors to consider. Try not to hang on just a single one.


Talentz

[Andre090904]

To answer your question:

"Is non-stop always better?"

No. At some point the Jet vs Prop question turns into which is more cost effective. At that point Pax distribution between the two doesn't matter as much. There are a number of factors to consider. Try not to hang on just a single one.


Talentz

Good point. To make this a bit more examplaric:

I was flying hundreds of NAMC (~50 seats) domestically out of ORD while competitors were flying 727. Of course the 727 is much bigger, faster and can carry more passengers. In the early years, my NAMC outperformed the 727 (in terms of seat allocation/market share) and were printing cash. However, with demand increasing, slot availability decreasing and staff costs getting important, NAMC were no longer a viable option. Instead of flying 3x NAMC to carry 150 passengers, I went for MD80 and carried the same number of passengers with just 1 plane. I saved in staff costs, slots and of course the MD80 was faster and could handle more flights a day than the props.

It really depends on the situation you are in. Both jets and props can work nicely.

[groundbum2]

I think the question was more about what the passenger prefers as opposed to the bean counters ;-)

In AWS non-stop wins every time, except in the early days when only very new planes could do the trip non-stop. An example would be LHR-LAX. Until the better DC10s come along even a 707-320B/c has to do a stop. When the DC10s/L1011s come along and do it non-stop the old 707s still generally get good LFs. But after another 5 years or so people get used to non-stops so the tech stop turns into a real penalty. A rule of thumb is 1 tech stop means 50% of passengers won't consider the flight, 2 tech stop means 90% of passengers won't fly.

Airplanes also has attractiveness numbers, and they change. So in the 1960s you have Britannias that can plod between LHR-JFK quite happily. Then the jets come along and not much changes, they're equals. But again within 5 years or so you see people preferring the widebody jets. So the Britannia loses market share. Concorde is more attractive than a 707 for example, and Soviet planes rate low for attractiveness.

There's also "too small" which will kick in for props sooner than jets.

Cargo doesn't care at all about tech stops.

Simon

[spiff23]

one thing I've noticed as well is a 747SP does really well on LF vs a similar DC-10/747-200 with a stop .,, a route like NRT-JFK.  SP can go non stop and everything else at that era needs a fuel stop in Alaska.  The downside is the 747SP times perfectly to one the worst oil crunch periods in the game and unless you thrive on stress...it's not necessarily the best strategy to be using that plane outside a few key routes/hubs between 1979-1984. 

(I almost wonder if the start of the downfall of Pan Am and why they sold their Pacific division to United in 1986 was because of their own 747SP nightmare.  They were part of the package and United flew those planes to about 1993/94..a period where they actually do well in AWS as the gas prices reset)