Just a quick question regarding scheduling.
Its my understanding that if I, for example, have a flight from Madrid to Valencia at 8.00am, and then have another one due to leave 10 minutes later, that the second flights loadfactor will suffer because two flights were scheduled to leave too close together. What I want to know, does this same theory apply to other airlines? For example, is my same flight from Madrid to Valencia at 8.00am going to affect a rival airlines flight who has scheduled his one to leave 10 minutes after mine?
Nope. The only reason it is treated as a single flight when close together is due to frequency. Usually the airline with the greatest frequency gets the most pax (aka the frequency bonus), but if you have flights 10 minutes apart, it only counts as 1 flight instead of 2 to combat abuse. Previously, a route with 1000 pax demand could have someone flying 100x daily with a 10 seater and absolutely destroy someone flying 3x daily with 330 seaters.
Okey doke, thanks for the quick reply.
Keep in mind though, that alliance flights do count as "your own" flights, and you will suffer, if an alliance member has a dep. time +/-10-30 minutes around you (the more demand, the lower the gaps can be).
At least I think it was like that, could be "scheduled for future development" as well though :/
cheers,
Jona L.
Alliance flights count for overscheduling, but is not picked up automatically, it needs a manual check.
Alliance flights definitely don't get automatically penalised for being too close together.