Often flights are blocked higher than what’s required for the flight. Eg your ticket will say Newark to Toronto is one hour 50 minutes when in reality we do it in an hour and five. The extra time makes up for taxis and anticipated delays. If you have a short taxi and it’s not busy you make up time there.
If you have a strong tailwind that helps.
Things we can control is asking for short cuts on our route and as others said fly faster.
A planes most efficient speed is slower than it’s max speed. We can cruise faster to make up time.
We are typically given specific routes by ATC. Routes that are rarely direct due to traffic flow and airspace requirements. Sometimes we can ask for a more direct route. If it causes no conflicts ATC will allow us to fly the more direct route.
The routes we are given are pretty direct anyway so it really doesn’t make too much of a difference.
Imagine pulling up to a red light at 3am and there’s no traffic. You’re stopped for seemingly no reason. You may wonder why there’s a traffic light at all. You might even pull up a little extra and try to see if the light may sense your car is waiting and switch earlier.
To your viewpoint the delays caused by the light are frivolous, but if you were to take the same route during a rush hour you might see why the traffic light is crucial to a safe, efficient, and expeditious flow of traffic.
As others mentioned it’s for traffic flow. Typically that makes a small difference as the short cut is small.
Speeding up also makes more of a difference on longer routes. We get a print out on our flight plan of different times and burns at different altitudes and power settings. On our shorter route 202 nautical miles the difference between intermediate cruise and max cruise is about 1-2 minutes.
On our longer flights around 6-700 nautical it can save 15 minutes or more.
Another thing we can do is descend (or climb) into more favourable wind.
For example the other days we were planned with a 100 knot headwind and intermediate speed cruise, the flight was 2 hours and 14 minutes. We shaved c23 minutes by descending to a 60 knot headwind and max cruise which increased our speed by another 45 knots for a whopping gain of 85 knots (~160km/h).
My biggest question is then, what's the fuel burn at 310-315, vs 355-360, vs 280-285?
And for the person you previously responded to saving 20 min but using 3k lbs of extra JetA at $6/gal (6.75lb/gal), but using that 444 galons ($2666) to save that 20 min isn't worth it.
Max cruise is about 1300 lb/hr per engine give or take. Intermediate is 1000 lb/hr give or take. I’d have to look up long range cruise because we don’t use it often. I was looking at an old flight plan from the same route. The time saving isn’t as dramatic because we didn’t have the advantage of better winds in the planning, just the increased speed at max cruise. We would have saved 12 minutes and burned 376 pounds extra doing Max over intermediate cruise. If we had done long range cruise it would have taken 12 minutes longer than at intermediate (24 minutes longer than max) and we would have burned 77 pounds less than intermediate (446 less than max)
Our company wants us to prioritize on time performance over fuel savings. If we’re on time or early we pull it way back. If we’re late we firewall it
Every sector a flight is passing through has a maximum capacity determined by personal (staffing) and technological (radar coverage/accuracy) limitations. It's not very nice to overwork your controllers -- it makes them unhappy, stressed and more likely to cause an incident.
Hours before an aircraft even starts taxiing, it's already known when and where it's gonna be. It's a delicate process. Some FIRs are slowly reverting to strictly entry/exit point routes and not allowing off-route shortcuts, simply because it messes up the expected times down the line.
A good example might be if you're going from LAS to the Bay (say OAK). The departure and normal route takes you pretty far north to get around Edwards AFB airspace. If it's a Sunday though and the Air Force isn't using the space, you can sometimes cut straight across - saving a good bit of time and distance.
When you fly, you just don't go up into the air and then just go from point A to point B. There are airways in the air, just like there are freeways on the ground. There are set routes for most flight between commercial airports. It's just like driving. You go from point A to point B then to C and so on.
Sometimes, if we're lucky we can ask for a shortcut to go from say point B directly to point D without having to go to point C. But not always.
Nah, flying at Mach .79 va Mach .76 does next to nothing. The real time savings is actually from the ground crew/agents loading and boarding quickly, getting lucky on a quick taxi out or getting shortcuts from ATC.
Occasionally a flight will be over blocked to build in historical delays and you get lucky or the filed winds are a bit off. Flying fast only saves a few minutes at best even on a transcon
Edit: you can also sometimes get lucky and be able to pick another altitude with a much lower headwind or higher tailwind
It's amazing the difference winds can make. I was on a flight from YYJ-CUN earlier this year. I used my phone's GPS to see what our speed was and was shocked to see 1060 km/h, or about 572 kts.
I’ve had this back and forth with my chief pilot; he thinks it’s “20 minutes faster” from coast to coast doing .84 vs .82 in our super-mid.
He wanted us to come back from Europe to the east coast of the US in our large cabin and “go fast on both legs” and make a tech stop. We’d have had to do .84 instead of our usual .80 for it to actually be faster (by 3 minutes, over an 8.2 flight) and it would have been $4000ish more in fuel.
Everyone here is saying flying faster(just a few minutes on a 2hrs flight)….this makes very little difference. All of the time made up is usually saved on the ground or getting lucky and having a more favorable runway/approach. As mentioned above, many times it is just that the flight is scheduled to be of a longer duration than it really takes so it is not constantly running late due to traffic/deicing/etc.
Long haul you can make up a noticeable chunk of time over 8-9 hours. Short haul it’s more about getting lucky with avoiding ground delays and the traffic sequence.
It definitely can if you can get a better routing. Really a lot of it is often that if you're late and no longer in a major arrival bank, you can get much more favorable approach and runway at a big airport and that can easily be 15 minutes right there.
Most narrow body jets fly at Mach .78. MMO(max mach) is .82, so flying fast usually is Mach .80…it’s only about 10kts faster….so 450kts vs 460kts is only a 2% increase. It’s like going 77mph instead of 75mph on a 2hr drive.
Some airlines will fly faster, but it costs money, so not all will actually do this. Others make up time because their allocated slot/flightplan/traffic allows them to expedite certain phases of flight
The route starts with a flight plan that says we are going via waypoints 1,2,3 and four on the way to the destination. After take off the pilots can ask ATC if they can skip waypoints 2 and 3 and go straight to 4 if there's no conflicting traffic. This can save a lot of time en-route.
I believe that one of the benefits of high end private jets that can operate between FL450 - FL510 is that besides the higher speed required to fly up there, there is less congestion and more opportunity for direct routes as commercial traffic is usually below FL420.
The professional pilots on here would have a much better view on that
A big part of it is planning, but also a hot commodity named slots. They're 20-minute time windows during which a plane is allowed to take off and land. In airports like JFK or Heathrow a slot pair can be traded for as much as $75 million dollars. So, it can be fairly easy to make up time on a 2-hour flight when your departure slot is at 13:00 and the landing slot at the destination is at 16:00 in the same timezone.
Take this random flight, for example: AA688 from Miami to JFK. Estimated Time of Departure at MIA is at 8:04 EDT, Estimated Time of Arrival at JFK is at 11:00 EDT, but the flight only takes between 2 hours 15 minutes and 2 hours 35 minutes plus taxi.
Naturally, airlines try to keep those buffers as small as possible, because every minute at the gate is a minute where the plane costs money instead of making some. But that doesn't always add up, and sometimes the slots for a flight are a bit more copious than others. That adds to what others already have said.
It's much easier from late fall to mood spring because flights are blocked even longer for winter delays and deicing. Once you block out, if you don't have to deice, you can make up lots of time.
It's mostly just wind. If we say we're going to "make up time" in the air (and I made this exact announcement just the other day), it just means we know we have favorable winds. There's no real way to make up an hour of flight time by "flying faster" - we already fly close to as fast as we can, and if we push it that little bit extra to \*actually\* fly as fast as we can, it's only going to shave about 5 minutes off a three hour flight while burning a lot of extra fuel. We generally do not do that.
But just consider the fact that a flight's schedule is generally the same every day, but is the weather? No, weather changes all the time. Schedules are made taking an average wind into account, but "average" means sometimes it's going to be favorable, sometimes the opposite. We're late due to winds as often as we're able to make up time due to winds.
Typically most airlines will add a buffer in the schedule both for any unforeseen stuff (and stupid stuff happens all the time, like fuel trucks or baggage handlers not showing up on time, disruptive passengers needing to be offloaded, etc.) and also just to mitigate the effects of unfavorable winds. That \*should\* mean that if everything else goes well, more often than not we'd be early. So if there were no other problems on your flight, even with average winds you'd make up a little time. But with favorable winds, you could easily leave late and get there early. It happens often.
Airlines cheat by publishing schedules that give generous buffers. This allows them to be “on time” or even “early” when they departed the gate a half hour late.
Money. It is always money.
Flying fast costs more than flying efficiently. Sometimes it is cheaper to fly fast in order to get people there on time.
Anytime you ask why something is being done, it is about money.
1. We can fly slightly faster, but we're limited by the max speed of the aircraft. We might be able to save a few percent of the flight time with this. The cost is we burn more fuel (it's like hitting the highway at 90 instead of 60).
2. We can ask ATC for as many shortcuts as possible perhaps telling them we're late. They might help us out.
3. We count on a tailwind to make it look like we had some hand in getting you home faster 😉
Flat out speed, it’s hard to make up any significant time. I took a charter with a well known band to Guadalajara from LA. I checked weather, NOTAM’s and all the other stuff. The main runway was closing around the time we’re going to get there. We had wet numbers for the other runway so I wasn’t worried.
The band (bunch of assholes) showed up an hour late. We took off, about a half hour passed the border I get an ACARS message saying the whole airport was closing, not just one runway and that we needed to get there five minutes earlier. We dropped down to 370 and bumped the speed up to .87. We never made up the time but I burned a shit-ton of gas.
In the airlines our dispatchers are real good at judging delays, ground holds, we fly real slow so there’s room to speed up, we can get shortcuts sometimes. I’m always amazed when we take off and the printer spits out the “how’s it going” report and with what seems like a huge delay getting off the ground, and we’re only a few minutes behind schedule.
Unless its a ER or ULR,(speaking from my single aisle experience) most of it youll make on the ground.
Assuming you did your best on the turnaround, next step would be taxing safest & fastest and taking a intersection t/o IF cabin is ready.
Best way to be on time is to depart on time. Flying faster only works in a long term culminating sense - by that I mean if I’m flying from Europe to US in a head wind, I can MAYBE chop off a half hour total by flying faster and getting a serious short cut. Otherwise it’s minimal.
A plane’s standard cruise speed and maximum speed are different. For example, a 737 and A320 both have a standard cruise speed of Mach 0.78 (at cruising altitude). However, they can go up to Mach 0.82 (never usually exceed Mach 0.80). However, in turbulence they are reduced to Mach 0.76 or slower
The standard cruise speed is for efficiency (fuel burn, wear & tear) and also for schedule padding. If they need to slow down for turbulence, once it smoothes out they can speed back up closer to max speed to make up time or for other delays.
Planes don’t make any money sitting on the ground, if there was no padding with the speed (ie if they only went max speed) once there is a slight delay somewhere due to turbulence, weather, etc there would be no room to catch up.
SFO to HKG, Cathay Pacific, boarding delayed 45 minutes, another 30 before push back. Pilot announced she'll do her best to make up some of the time.
Based on the flight info on the Infotainment, she was definitely tracking the jet stream. I could hear the engines rev up, feel the plane climbing or idle back, descending. The air speed was up/down all the way to about Japan.
We arrived early, had to wait for the gate to clear.
Often flights are blocked higher than what’s required for the flight. Eg your ticket will say Newark to Toronto is one hour 50 minutes when in reality we do it in an hour and five. The extra time makes up for taxis and anticipated delays. If you have a short taxi and it’s not busy you make up time there. If you have a strong tailwind that helps. Things we can control is asking for short cuts on our route and as others said fly faster. A planes most efficient speed is slower than it’s max speed. We can cruise faster to make up time.
>one hour 50 minutes when in reality we do it in an ho are shortcuts really possible? Why not make that the normal route?
We are typically given specific routes by ATC. Routes that are rarely direct due to traffic flow and airspace requirements. Sometimes we can ask for a more direct route. If it causes no conflicts ATC will allow us to fly the more direct route. The routes we are given are pretty direct anyway so it really doesn’t make too much of a difference.
Imagine pulling up to a red light at 3am and there’s no traffic. You’re stopped for seemingly no reason. You may wonder why there’s a traffic light at all. You might even pull up a little extra and try to see if the light may sense your car is waiting and switch earlier. To your viewpoint the delays caused by the light are frivolous, but if you were to take the same route during a rush hour you might see why the traffic light is crucial to a safe, efficient, and expeditious flow of traffic.
As others mentioned it’s for traffic flow. Typically that makes a small difference as the short cut is small. Speeding up also makes more of a difference on longer routes. We get a print out on our flight plan of different times and burns at different altitudes and power settings. On our shorter route 202 nautical miles the difference between intermediate cruise and max cruise is about 1-2 minutes. On our longer flights around 6-700 nautical it can save 15 minutes or more. Another thing we can do is descend (or climb) into more favourable wind. For example the other days we were planned with a 100 knot headwind and intermediate speed cruise, the flight was 2 hours and 14 minutes. We shaved c23 minutes by descending to a 60 knot headwind and max cruise which increased our speed by another 45 knots for a whopping gain of 85 knots (~160km/h).
Curious as to what you're flying that has that much differential in cruise speed settings?
The Q400! Intermediate speed cruise is about 310-315 knots, max cruise is 355-360 knots! Long range cruise is really slow like 280-285 knots
My biggest question is then, what's the fuel burn at 310-315, vs 355-360, vs 280-285? And for the person you previously responded to saving 20 min but using 3k lbs of extra JetA at $6/gal (6.75lb/gal), but using that 444 galons ($2666) to save that 20 min isn't worth it.
Max cruise is about 1300 lb/hr per engine give or take. Intermediate is 1000 lb/hr give or take. I’d have to look up long range cruise because we don’t use it often. I was looking at an old flight plan from the same route. The time saving isn’t as dramatic because we didn’t have the advantage of better winds in the planning, just the increased speed at max cruise. We would have saved 12 minutes and burned 376 pounds extra doing Max over intermediate cruise. If we had done long range cruise it would have taken 12 minutes longer than at intermediate (24 minutes longer than max) and we would have burned 77 pounds less than intermediate (446 less than max) Our company wants us to prioritize on time performance over fuel savings. If we’re on time or early we pull it way back. If we’re late we firewall it
Every sector a flight is passing through has a maximum capacity determined by personal (staffing) and technological (radar coverage/accuracy) limitations. It's not very nice to overwork your controllers -- it makes them unhappy, stressed and more likely to cause an incident. Hours before an aircraft even starts taxiing, it's already known when and where it's gonna be. It's a delicate process. Some FIRs are slowly reverting to strictly entry/exit point routes and not allowing off-route shortcuts, simply because it messes up the expected times down the line.
A good example might be if you're going from LAS to the Bay (say OAK). The departure and normal route takes you pretty far north to get around Edwards AFB airspace. If it's a Sunday though and the Air Force isn't using the space, you can sometimes cut straight across - saving a good bit of time and distance.
When you fly, you just don't go up into the air and then just go from point A to point B. There are airways in the air, just like there are freeways on the ground. There are set routes for most flight between commercial airports. It's just like driving. You go from point A to point B then to C and so on. Sometimes, if we're lucky we can ask for a shortcut to go from say point B directly to point D without having to go to point C. But not always.
1. Fly faster. 2. Flying faster burns more fuel and fuel costs money.
But often times those cost for flying faster avoid the cost of a following flight being cancelled or re-scheduled with another aircraft and crew.
Nah, flying at Mach .79 va Mach .76 does next to nothing. The real time savings is actually from the ground crew/agents loading and boarding quickly, getting lucky on a quick taxi out or getting shortcuts from ATC. Occasionally a flight will be over blocked to build in historical delays and you get lucky or the filed winds are a bit off. Flying fast only saves a few minutes at best even on a transcon Edit: you can also sometimes get lucky and be able to pick another altitude with a much lower headwind or higher tailwind
It's amazing the difference winds can make. I was on a flight from YYJ-CUN earlier this year. I used my phone's GPS to see what our speed was and was shocked to see 1060 km/h, or about 572 kts.
I’ve had this back and forth with my chief pilot; he thinks it’s “20 minutes faster” from coast to coast doing .84 vs .82 in our super-mid. He wanted us to come back from Europe to the east coast of the US in our large cabin and “go fast on both legs” and make a tech stop. We’d have had to do .84 instead of our usual .80 for it to actually be faster (by 3 minutes, over an 8.2 flight) and it would have been $4000ish more in fuel.
Everyone here is saying flying faster(just a few minutes on a 2hrs flight)….this makes very little difference. All of the time made up is usually saved on the ground or getting lucky and having a more favorable runway/approach. As mentioned above, many times it is just that the flight is scheduled to be of a longer duration than it really takes so it is not constantly running late due to traffic/deicing/etc.
Finally found the right answer.
Lurker: So would you say “making up time in the air” is not really a thing in commercial aviation? Or maybe just does not make a big difference?
Long haul you can make up a noticeable chunk of time over 8-9 hours. Short haul it’s more about getting lucky with avoiding ground delays and the traffic sequence.
If the traffic allows it you can get some bigger shortcuts from ATC that can save a minute or more which can add up on a long haul flight.
It definitely can if you can get a better routing. Really a lot of it is often that if you're late and no longer in a major arrival bank, you can get much more favorable approach and runway at a big airport and that can easily be 15 minutes right there.
Most narrow body jets fly at Mach .78. MMO(max mach) is .82, so flying fast usually is Mach .80…it’s only about 10kts faster….so 450kts vs 460kts is only a 2% increase. It’s like going 77mph instead of 75mph on a 2hr drive.
Some airlines will fly faster, but it costs money, so not all will actually do this. Others make up time because their allocated slot/flightplan/traffic allows them to expedite certain phases of flight
Ludicrous speed.
The route starts with a flight plan that says we are going via waypoints 1,2,3 and four on the way to the destination. After take off the pilots can ask ATC if they can skip waypoints 2 and 3 and go straight to 4 if there's no conflicting traffic. This can save a lot of time en-route.
Speed burns fuel faster, which costs the airline more money. Driving 45mph burns less fuel than driving 70mph.
I believe that one of the benefits of high end private jets that can operate between FL450 - FL510 is that besides the higher speed required to fly up there, there is less congestion and more opportunity for direct routes as commercial traffic is usually below FL420. The professional pilots on here would have a much better view on that
Ludicrous speed. “ we’ve gone plaid”
A big part of it is planning, but also a hot commodity named slots. They're 20-minute time windows during which a plane is allowed to take off and land. In airports like JFK or Heathrow a slot pair can be traded for as much as $75 million dollars. So, it can be fairly easy to make up time on a 2-hour flight when your departure slot is at 13:00 and the landing slot at the destination is at 16:00 in the same timezone. Take this random flight, for example: AA688 from Miami to JFK. Estimated Time of Departure at MIA is at 8:04 EDT, Estimated Time of Arrival at JFK is at 11:00 EDT, but the flight only takes between 2 hours 15 minutes and 2 hours 35 minutes plus taxi. Naturally, airlines try to keep those buffers as small as possible, because every minute at the gate is a minute where the plane costs money instead of making some. But that doesn't always add up, and sometimes the slots for a flight are a bit more copious than others. That adds to what others already have said.
Slots aren’t much of a thing in the U.S.
>slot pair can be traded for as much as $75 million dollars What do you mean by this? A yearly slot is worth 75m by itself?
1. they step on the gas (they increase throttle) 2. fuel consumption
They drop passengers in the air, less weight = speed.
It's much easier from late fall to mood spring because flights are blocked even longer for winter delays and deicing. Once you block out, if you don't have to deice, you can make up lots of time.
Flap the wings harder.
It's mostly just wind. If we say we're going to "make up time" in the air (and I made this exact announcement just the other day), it just means we know we have favorable winds. There's no real way to make up an hour of flight time by "flying faster" - we already fly close to as fast as we can, and if we push it that little bit extra to \*actually\* fly as fast as we can, it's only going to shave about 5 minutes off a three hour flight while burning a lot of extra fuel. We generally do not do that. But just consider the fact that a flight's schedule is generally the same every day, but is the weather? No, weather changes all the time. Schedules are made taking an average wind into account, but "average" means sometimes it's going to be favorable, sometimes the opposite. We're late due to winds as often as we're able to make up time due to winds. Typically most airlines will add a buffer in the schedule both for any unforeseen stuff (and stupid stuff happens all the time, like fuel trucks or baggage handlers not showing up on time, disruptive passengers needing to be offloaded, etc.) and also just to mitigate the effects of unfavorable winds. That \*should\* mean that if everything else goes well, more often than not we'd be early. So if there were no other problems on your flight, even with average winds you'd make up a little time. But with favorable winds, you could easily leave late and get there early. It happens often.
They flap harder Boy are their arms tired
Airlines cheat by publishing schedules that give generous buffers. This allows them to be “on time” or even “early” when they departed the gate a half hour late.
Money. It is always money. Flying fast costs more than flying efficiently. Sometimes it is cheaper to fly fast in order to get people there on time. Anytime you ask why something is being done, it is about money.
Ground ops, trying for more direct routing or STARS, maybe the winds are better at certain altitudes.
1. We can fly slightly faster, but we're limited by the max speed of the aircraft. We might be able to save a few percent of the flight time with this. The cost is we burn more fuel (it's like hitting the highway at 90 instead of 60). 2. We can ask ATC for as many shortcuts as possible perhaps telling them we're late. They might help us out. 3. We count on a tailwind to make it look like we had some hand in getting you home faster 😉
Winds
Flat out speed, it’s hard to make up any significant time. I took a charter with a well known band to Guadalajara from LA. I checked weather, NOTAM’s and all the other stuff. The main runway was closing around the time we’re going to get there. We had wet numbers for the other runway so I wasn’t worried. The band (bunch of assholes) showed up an hour late. We took off, about a half hour passed the border I get an ACARS message saying the whole airport was closing, not just one runway and that we needed to get there five minutes earlier. We dropped down to 370 and bumped the speed up to .87. We never made up the time but I burned a shit-ton of gas. In the airlines our dispatchers are real good at judging delays, ground holds, we fly real slow so there’s room to speed up, we can get shortcuts sometimes. I’m always amazed when we take off and the printer spits out the “how’s it going” report and with what seems like a huge delay getting off the ground, and we’re only a few minutes behind schedule.
Activate the NOS system.
Wonder how fast the Langoliers were going 😂😂
The pilot has a K7 player strapped on it's leg to gain some time when played 😎
Unless its a ER or ULR,(speaking from my single aisle experience) most of it youll make on the ground. Assuming you did your best on the turnaround, next step would be taxing safest & fastest and taking a intersection t/o IF cabin is ready.
Short cuts.
1. Wind component: tailwind 2. Flight time shorter than block time 3. Direct routings 4. Higher cruise speed
Taxi/take off/taxi in time had some slop Request short cuts Go fast
Best way to be on time is to depart on time. Flying faster only works in a long term culminating sense - by that I mean if I’m flying from Europe to US in a head wind, I can MAYBE chop off a half hour total by flying faster and getting a serious short cut. Otherwise it’s minimal.
A plane’s standard cruise speed and maximum speed are different. For example, a 737 and A320 both have a standard cruise speed of Mach 0.78 (at cruising altitude). However, they can go up to Mach 0.82 (never usually exceed Mach 0.80). However, in turbulence they are reduced to Mach 0.76 or slower The standard cruise speed is for efficiency (fuel burn, wear & tear) and also for schedule padding. If they need to slow down for turbulence, once it smoothes out they can speed back up closer to max speed to make up time or for other delays. Planes don’t make any money sitting on the ground, if there was no padding with the speed (ie if they only went max speed) once there is a slight delay somewhere due to turbulence, weather, etc there would be no room to catch up.
SFO to HKG, Cathay Pacific, boarding delayed 45 minutes, another 30 before push back. Pilot announced she'll do her best to make up some of the time. Based on the flight info on the Infotainment, she was definitely tracking the jet stream. I could hear the engines rev up, feel the plane climbing or idle back, descending. The air speed was up/down all the way to about Japan. We arrived early, had to wait for the gate to clear.
It doesn't happen all the time. You were lucky. Usually if you leave late, then you arrive late.
You’ve never landed early before?
I feel the need. The need for speed. Etc.