aa to clt

a year or so ago aa dropped the one mainline jet on the clt-mia route…well today on airliners.net i read tht their adding a 6 rj to the route and wondered…y not stick a mainline or two back onto the route…they fly mainlines to dfw and no where else leaving 5/25 or 1/4 of teh daily departures mainline out of 5 destinations

Airlines have found out that passengers prefer frequency over aircraft size. It’s better to have, say, 5 flights a day with a 50 passenger aircraft (total of 250 seats) than it is to have two flights a day with a 125 passengers aircraft).

when they did have mainline service is was a 738 and 2 erj’s now its 6 erjs…and i read on airliners.net that its a popular route…i thought a mainline upgrade on 1 or 2 of the 6 wouldn’t hurt…it could be lack of gate space 2 gates for 5 destinations?

While it’s a popular route, you also need to understand that American isn’t the only airline flying the route. US Airways has more connecting opportunities at Charlotte because it is a hub for them. American doesn’t have a hub there.

Here’s the figures from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Figures are the total passengers flown, regardless of direction. To maintain an apple-to-apple comparison, figures are for the first eight months of each year because the latest figures available for 2007 only go through August. Figures are for 2006 followed by 2007.

American/American Eagle: 68,539/86,629 passengers
US Airways: 283,482/346,697 passengers.

Don’t forget: what you read on airliners.net is not always accurate. For there person(s) who will ask me to come up with facts on this: DON’T BOTHER!

yeah ill admit…its somewhat that i would like to see more mainline service from the other airlines at clt…especially the ones that use to have it like CO

I will bother. Your words are just baseless opinions unless you provide facts.

If you are quick to point out the errs of someone’s ways, please provide proof.

Otherwise, what you say can be considered slanderous or defamation.

Definitions of slander on the Web:
words falsely spoken that damage the reputation of another
aspersion: an abusive attack on a person’s character or good name
defame: charge falsely or with malicious intent; attack the good name and reputation of someone; “The journalists have defamed me!” “The article in the paper sullied my reputation”

Allen

Sorry, Allen. I’m not going to play your *petty *game any more of attacking people who you think are wrong or disagree with you.

While that may be true on short flights, I don’t see evidence that it is correct for longer flights. Don’t see CRJ’s flown much coast to coast, even from airports where there are few flights.

Regional jets don’t have the range to go coast-to-coast with a decent load.

I think I should clarify what I said about frequency: on SHORT and MEDIUM haul flights, people like frequent flights.

an upgrade to a bigger aircraft on 1 maybe 2 flights wouldn’t bother the frequency i would think

It would. The airlines are in business to make money, not give better spotting opportunities. If you have regularly have 50 people flying from CLT to MIA at a given time of day then it makes NO sense whatsoever to schedule a flight with a 130 seat aircraft when an ERJ with 50 seats would do just as good.

ok so they can cut 1 rj flight…

You just don’t seem to get it! Let me see if I can explain it another way, using CLT to MIA as an example.

You have 150 passengers wanting to fly the route every day. You have two types of aircraft: one seats 150, one seats 50. You schedule the 150 seat aircraft on the route because you have 150 passengers that want to fly the route. You get a fully loaded aircraft, right? You know, 150 passengers, 150 seats. WRONG!!! You may get 75 passengers because the other 75 want to travel at a different time.

Now, you schedule 4 aircraft that seat 50 people each. Guess what? There’s a good chance that all aircraft with go out with very high loads because the flights are at times that the 75 people who didn’t take the flight in the previous paragraph want.

Clt is BANKING city…so they could just add mainline to the 7am flight leaving clt and 7pm flight leaving miami like they did 2 years ago…thats all i ask …it worked 2 years ago with only 3 rj flights during the day…that way the bankers have a covient flight sorta like the A319 usairways has from Clt-Abe(Allentown, PA)…it makes sense

this is completely off topic but US is starting CLt-Dab service 3x daily with e175 starting Febuary 1st

No, it doesn’t make sense. Here’s another example. Even if they had the passengers to support a 737, they may still not do it because the aircraft, as I mentioned earlier, could be used on a route that has a higher yield.

If you have a route that gets an average of 7 cents per passenger mile (e.g. CLT-DFW) and a route that gets 6.5 cents per passenger mile (e.g. CLT-MIA), which route would you put the flight on?

i see on wiki that co and aa have 737s on order probally clt will be added from Miami Hopefully…they have 47 on order

Who has 47 on order? CO? AA? Punctuation helps. (By looking at the Boeing website, I found out it was AA with 47; Continental has 64 of the 700/800/900 series to be delivered).

Again, it all depends on the BEST use of the aircraft, not what aviation enthusiasts want. Sorry to disappoint you.

Just as importantly, look at the departure time, and consider the market being served. Total numbers don’t always tell the complete story.

USA flies five “mainliners” a day on the southbound leg - *all but a single early-am flight depart between noon and 6 pm. * The later flights are there primarly to haul butts brought into Charlotte on feeder flights - hence, the need for more seats.

AA has three of their departures before noon, and then a single afternoon and evening flight. I strongly suspect that at least half of the paxs on the AM flights are connecting at MIA to AA’s network of flights to the Carribbean and South America, meaning AA really needs to fly south in the morning. At that time of the day, I suspect AA would want to concentrate larger planes on their major hub routes into ORD and DFW - and during the rest of the day, AA simply doesn’t have to market power on that lane to herd up 125 butts at a time against four USA departures.

I’m sure there are folks here that are familar with airline crew and equipment costs, but my guess is that AA could fly three regionals in the morning on that route for less than they could fly two 737’s or MD88’s - and increase their flexibility on a lane with critical connections.

Dami, CLTflyr is just a kid. I’m not sure that what we say is really going to get thru. Its good to have newbies around, but they should be reading more than asking and starting topics. imho of course.