American Airlines Overhauls Its Schedules Starting In April To Begin Running On Time — Cutting Missed Connections And Lost Bags

American Airlines is re-timing flights in and out of Dallas – Fort Worth to go from 9 ‘banks’ of flights a day to 13 banks of flights starting in April (with new schedules slated to appear with Saturday night’s update). This is intended to spread demand across the day, reduce the number of ultra-tight connections, and improve “trip certainty” at its biggest hub.

They’re pairing that with:

• more scheduled time for flights systemwide (including to and from Dallas)
• more “remote deplaning” capability to avoid diversions away from Dallas in bad weather when gates are gridlocked,
• continued airport capital investment, from additional gates on the A and C concourses to the new terminal F that American will fully occupy – with premium facilities, check-in and security as well as customs. (I expect a premium security path and Flagship lounge as well, though these haven’t been announced. )

Spreading the American operation at Dallas – Fort Worth out from 9 to 13 flight banks should reduce stress on the opreation – fewer times that a single flight delay means a gate is unavailable for an incoming flight, cascading the effects of the delay onto more passengers (who miss their connectin) and more flights (because the crew on the flight without a gate can’t make it to the next flights they’re working).

This is best understood as partial de-peaking: DFW will still be a banked hub, but with smaller waves and less extreme peaks. With ~930 peak daily departures:

• 9-bank average ≈ 103 departures/bank
  
• 13-bank average ≈ 72 departures/bank

That’s a ~30% reduction in bank “size” if the day were distributed evenly across banks.

In addition to de-peaking, American is increasing block times. Some would call it schedule padding. They’re going to have better on-time performance, because on-time is measured against the schedule. More often you’ll see flights arrive early or at least not be late, because additional buffer gets built in.

American is making a bold and unprecedented investment in block time for flights to and from DFW and across the airline’s network. Block time — the total scheduled time between pushback from the departure gate to arrival at the destination gate — determines how long a customer’s trip feels.

With this investment in American’s customers, the airline is ensuring more on-time departures that lead to more on-time arrivals and fewer delays, all creating an overall smoother and improved travel experience.

Fewer late arriving flights, and more time between many connections, means they should also reduce the number of connecting bags that don’t make their next flight – ultimately helping the airline’s mishandled bag numbers which have been worst in the industry for years.

They’re also going to have more flights arriving at remote stands when needed – bussing passengers from planes to the terminal when they don’t have gates, which is better than leaving them stuck on the tarmac (or diverting away from Dallas, frequently to Austin).

American is investing millions of dollars in additional remote deplaning capability (everything from equipment and bussing to staffing) that allows the airline to most importantly, divert fewer flights away from DFW.

This should all mean more connecting opportunities, and the opportunity to opt for longer connections without those longer connections being several hours in the future in many cases. And, they think it’ll mean less congested airspace so fewer air traffic control delays.

But this is all expensive. On the other hand, 13 banks means fewer periods of inactivity in the airport.

• Banked hubs are efficient for selling connections. A bunch of planes arrive, passengers get off and transfer, and then leave right away. That means very little time for passengers on the ground, and shorter overall trip times.

• That’s historically meant more ticket sales, since shorter trips have been displayed first to customers and customers prefer to buy those shorter trips (until they start digging in and asking whether their connection is realistic).

• But it also means high costs because there are periods of huge activity, and then everyone sits around and waits for the next period of high activity. More banks means less inactivity.

American risks increasing connection times and losing ticket sales as a result. But this sounds like a big effort in making the operation more reliable.

Increasing block times, too, makes flights look like they take longer, but it’ll mean more control over the operation and fewer missed connections. It also sets them up to successfully hold flights for connections so they don’t misconnect.

That’s something American has been doing, years after United rolled out their ‘ConnectionSaver’ program. Longer block times means that flights will often be projected to land early and thus holding a flight for passengers won’t make them late – an easy choice to hold the plane, then.

United Airlines began schedule padding a decade ago as a first step to improving its reliability. If they weren’t hitting their published schedules, the schedules weren’t realistic. They needed to add time to how long flights were projected to take. Those revised schedules were in some sense more true and honest. They let United hit easier targets, and they began doing a better job hitting those targets (as well as giving them room to hold flights for delayed customers at times).

American operates at peak over 930 flights a day from DFW airport to over 230 destinations. In late June they actually publish as many as 975 flights today (before the schedule load), according to data from aviation analytics company Cirium, though that’s far enough out that they may not actually fly that many. The changes American is making here aren’t really adding flights. It’s spreading out those flights.

Spreading out the flights is expensive but on-time reliability is an investment in delivering to expectation, which is table stakes but a first step before premium investment and giving customers a buy up ladder to spend more on better experiences really starts to matter.

In other words, first we need to be reliable and lose fewer bags. That was actually part of the Delta formula.

Given how significant this seems to be, I’m only a little bit puzzled that they’re announcing this during the dead news period between Christmas and New Year’s. The only thing I can figure out is that they decided that’s when they were going to do the schedule load, and so that forced the announcement timing. And that means they’re still a bit behind with driving the narrative and telling their story, to customers and employees, about what each piece of what they’re trying to accomplish fits together into a bigger direction. They’re leaving it to people like me to do it for them!