United Airlines' earlier departures are among the industry's attempts to save money and ease congestion

Date: May 22, 2007
Source: Chicago Tribune
Author: Julie Johnsson

Attention passengers: Your early-morning flight is about to leave a lot earlier.

In a bid to beat the summer congestion in the skies, Chicago-based United Airlines has scheduled 50 percent more 6 a.m. departures at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in June than it did a year ago and is testing flights that leave as early as 5:30 a.m. in Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston and other cities. If passengers take a liking to it, United plans to expand the program.

It is the airline equivalent to hitting the Kennedy Expressway long before traffic starts to build at 7 a.m.

On the eve of what could be the worst summer airline travel season since 2000, United and other carriers are trying to wring new savings from flight schedules by minimizing delays.

In a normal summer, delays soar as heavy air traffic meets tumultuous weather.

But the financial pressure on airlines is greater this summer, the season when airlines typically make their biggest profit for the year.

With passengers balking at price increases, and airline workers unwilling to take additional pay cuts, U.S. carriers are forced to find other ways to boost profit. Starting the day earlier on hundreds of flights saves money for United because it can wring more flying time out of its planes and helps passengers make more connections at hubs like O'Hare, all while avoiding delays when runways clog during peak morning departure times.

But will travelers be willing to rise at 3:30 a.m. or earlier to catch a flight that has a better chance of arriving on time?

Some other airlines don't think so and are trying to drive huge savings in other ways. Low-cost carrier Southwest Airline, which tested, and abandoned, 5:30 a.m. departures after finding few takers, says it has found significant new savings by tweaking its summer schedule to make the most of the seasonal shift in the jet stream.

The massive west-to-east air current, which settles over the middle of the U.S. each winter, creates turbulent winds that slow flying times. But from March through September, the jet stream moves north over Canada, allowing planes to reach destinations quicker.

Using a complex computer program created in-house, Southwest tweaked its summer schedule this year to make the most out of the favorable winds. That has shaved flight times by five minutes here, 20 minutes there, and the small increments have added up.

Southwest saves more than 90 hours of flying time each day, freeing up the equivalent of 10 aircraft, said Lonny Hurwitz, a manager for schedule planning with the Dallas-based carrier.

"That's an incredible savings," said Darryl Jenkins, a longtime aviation observer who is creating a center at Ohio State University to dream up better ways for airlines to run their businesses. "And they didn't need to shaft employees to get it," he added, referring to the steep salary and benefit cuts that most other airlines used to return to profitability following the industry's slump earlier this decade.

"Any savings we're going to get in the future is going to come out of smarter operations," said Jenkins. "Schedules are the great black holes of the airline industry. For years, we didn't look at them much. How we schedule flights, planes and crews are all very important."

Other carriers also are tinkering with schedules. American Airlines, for example, has spread arrivals and departures more evenly at its airport hubs and is studying ways to shorten the time it takes planes to unload and reload passengers, said a spokesman.

United said last week that it is reducing its 2007 domestic capacity by about 2 percent as the U.S. economy slows, moves that are reflected in its June and July schedules. United appears to be pruning routes where it is losing money, such as cutting flights at supercompetitive Los Angeles International Airport by nearly 11 percent, while shifting planes and crews to routes where the prospects are better, noted Daniel McKenzie, aviation analyst with investment bank Credit Suisse, in two research reports this month.

The airline sees a strategic strength in offering more early-morning flights that are popular with business travelers, a highly sought customer segment. In addition to being less prone to delays, the first flights departing for the day are popular because they transport lawyers or bankers to Eastern financial centers in time for mid-morning meetings.

"We are looking at improvements to our schedule to optimize revenue, better use our assets and, most importantly, provide our customers more convenient connection options," said United spokeswoman Jean Medina.

At 5:30 a.m. on any given Monday, the Premier customer check-in line at United's terminal at O'Hare resembles an industry reunion. For example, corporate advisers from virtually every local consultancy in Chicago head out on weekly client engagements that will bring them home on Thursday evening or Friday.

"You see everybody you know," said George Chen, principal with Strategos, a Chicago-based consulting firm.

A year ago, United offered a smattering of very early departures, primarily to travelers heading east from West Coast cities like Spokane, Wash. Now it is testing similar departures times from East Coast cities, too, while boosting the number of 6 a.m. departures at O'Hare and many other locales.

For June, the carrier scheduled 772 departures nationwide before 6 a.m., more than double the 381 flights it offered a year earlier, according to data provided by Connecticut-based Back Aviation.

At O'Hare, United's earliest flight leaves at 6 a.m. But the airline has increased the number of departures scheduled for that time to 234 for the month of June, up from 157 a year ago.

Some business travelers say they would jump at flights that leave even earlier.

"I will do it for two reasons: for business productivity and the opportunity to get back home early," said marketing executive Kevin Donnellon, president of Chicago-based Macali Communications Inc.

Shifting the scheduled departure for a Boston flight to Chicago to 5:44 a.m. from a 6 a.m. departure time, for example, will let travelers make connections to 15 additional cities out of Chicago that they previously would have missed, Medina said. United will test this new flight time during June and make it permanent if customers warm to it, she said. United also is reducing the number of flights it offers during the peak morning periods, which coincide with rush-hour times on the roads, while increasing the number of flights leaving after 9 a.m, according to the Back Aviation data. But skeptics question whether United will find sufficient numbers of passengers willing to fly outside popular flying times, particularly early birds wanting to make predawn departures.

"Good luck," said aviation analyst Robert Mann, president of R.W. Mann & Co., a consulting firm based in Port Washington, N.Y.

Mann noted that most major carriers haven't offered many ultraearly morning flights since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when airlines drastically reduced the number of scheduled flights.

"The first and last flights were prized by business travelers, who disappeared after 9/11," he said. "Unless you can get people to pay extra money for those flights, it's not worth it."

But United, which is courting business travelers, may have found a lucrative niche, especially since it deals with far greater numbers of connecting passengers than Southwest does, Hurwitz noted.

But whether there are a sufficient number of early-bird travelers to support a major strategic shift isn't yet clear. Chen of Strategos says he wouldn't get up at 3:30 a.m. to make a business flight but knows others who would do so.

"Some of my colleagues would definitely take the night at home and get up, no matter what the hour," Chen said. "The trade-off is to be able to tuck their children in at night. Many people are willing to give up half an hour, 45 minutes of sleep to have that choice."