A day's work for a Southwest 737

Nick

Nick

Well-Known Member
I was walking through an airport terminal today and found a sheet of paper on the ground that gave today's schedule for one particular airplane. I thought some might find it interesting to see just how much the thing flies in a day and I don't doubt that this is a typical day for one of theirs, or any other airline's plane for that matter. It is just funny to see a SWA plane because it does so many legs in a day compared to a 757 or A-320 that might cover the same ground in one or two legs. The number in the parentheses is minutes on the ground between flights.

If you were N774SW today, you'd have flown:

MCO-STL 0710-0845 (25)
STL-DTW 0910-1135 (25)
DTW-MDW 1200-1225 (35)
MDW-PHX 1300-1600 (35)
PHX-SAN 1635-1640 (30)
SAN-OAK 1710-1845 (35)
OAK-ONT 1920-2035 (20)
ONT-SMF 2055-2210

gcmap


Similar to this, I always find it incredible to think how little time a long haul jet can spend on the ground for days at a time, flying 10-16 hours only to sit for 90 minutes and turn around and do it again, and take a three hour break, and do another 12 hour flight, turn around, 14 hours, etc . . .
 
The contract company I work for has a hard enough time turning a CR2 in 20mins:banghead:

I can't emagine turning a 737 in that little time... Must have over 100 bags going on and off.
 
When I was at AA in LGA doing transcons, we'd take a 767 from JFK to LAX, and that airplane would turn right around and go back east. Those planes spent far more time in the air than then did on the ground.
 
Southwest is well known for their turns. They're really good at it. They do very little catering. They don't do as much hub and spoke, so there are likely more flights that don't require as much fuel upload. Every employee is utilized with great efficiency. I always see pilots helping out in the cabin. Their seat assignment system (do they still do this?) was more efficient because people take less time to choose the seat they want, than to find an assigned seat (although not much). I've heard flt attnd tell people to take their seat and wait to stow their bags. I've seen commuting pilots help out with preflights and thruflights. They seem to do everything it takes to get the planes to another revenue flight as quick as possible.
 
falconvalley said:
Southwest is well known for their turns. They're really good at it. They do very little catering. They don't do as much hub and spoke, so there are likely more flights that don't require as much fuel upload. Every employee is utilized with great efficiency. I always see pilots helping out in the cabin. Their seat assignment system (do they still do this?) was more efficient because people take less time to choose the seat they want, than to find an assigned seat (although not much). I've heard flt attnd tell people to take their seat and wait to stow their bags. I've seen commuting pilots help out with preflights and thruflights. They seem to do everything it takes to get the planes to another revenue flight as quick as possible.
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Amazing what your people are willing to do when you treat your people well.
 
VATechPilot said:
Yeah...I'm really looking forward to seeing just how they do them 25 minute turns.
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Planning and preparation. I think my record was 22 minutes in MCO with a full off, full on 737-700. 20 minutes before the plane gets to the gate, you get a load sheet, so you know how much is coming off the plane. You've already got most of your outbound bags sitting at the gate already, so you're able to pre-plan how to load it. Set up empty baggage carts so you've got enough to offload. Meet the plane when it comes to the gate, and have the ground power cable down and stretched across the parking line. When the plane stops, plug the cable in, and they can shut down the engines and never have to start the APU. As soon as #2 stops, pop the cargo bin doors and pull the belt loaders up. Off load bags, put bags on. While the ramp is doing that, provisioning has pulled up a truck in the rear and a truck in the front to service the galleys. Customer service has already opened the main cabin door, and they've got the people up top ready to go. Leave the front bin door open for last minute bags that won't fit in the overhead, or in the case of MCO a LOT of strollers. Close the front bin about 5 minutes from departure time, clear the flight crew to start the APU, yank the ground power, close the cabin door, pull the jetbridge back, and push her out.

If the plane isn't full, 25 minute turns are WELL doable. If it's full, you just have to have your planning down to a science. Even then, it's not that hard for people that are used to it.
 
EVERY SWA flight I have been on, look out the window and it looks like a NASCAR pit crew moving with the motivation that they have to turn that plane or the race will be lost. In the background there is often a smoking BBQ they can return to as soon as the job is done. And the workers, well they are actually smiling.
 
That Southwest schedule is 14.5 hours utilization for that day. Impressive, especially for winter.

For reference, some average daily utilizations are (from 2007):

Code: 
Southwest     11.2
Frontier      12.5
AirTran       11.0
Alaska        10.2
American       9.3 (domestic single-aisle only)
Continental   10.1 (single-aisle only)
Delta         11.0 (single-aisle only)
JetBlue       12.8
Northwest      8.4 (single-aisle only)
United        10.7 (single-aisle only)

Since the time of these numbers, you can probably assume utilizations are down about 7.5% across the board unless the fleet size decreased (good thing you Deltoids have some wiggle room to work with!).
 
Compare this to us when we land at O'Hare. Us: "Ops this is Mercury XXXX we're on the ground."

ORD Ops: "Hey there...you're gate's occupied until an hour (or more) from now"

Us: "Faaaantastic"

We go and sit on a pad somewhere on the airport for that hour (or often more) with the APU running. Finally get clearance to the gate, taxi another 20 mins, stop short of the gate because it is a ghost town...no one there to guide us in. We gripe to ops some more, and eventually some tired looking rampers come casually strolling out, looking at us angrily. Not their fault...they're probably doing twice the work they were a few years ago. We stop at the gate and there is no gate agent there to drive the jetway up. We gripe to ops some more and after another 10 minutes a gate agent comes hustling down, out of breath. We leave the APU on since we dont see the ground pwr hooked up, I go down and ask them about it, and it doesn't work at most of the gates. We deplane, load the next group, it starts to snow and we call for deice, and are advised that we're number 15 for deice. After another hour and a half, a single deice truck pulls up, again with a very exhausted looking crew to spray us off. We finally push, taxi for 20 mins, get in line, and finally depart, a good 4+ hours after we landed. Outstation turns, on the other hand, usually go pretty smoothly.

This is the price we pay for the old hub and spoke business model with too much traffic and the thought that cutting some of these crucial infrastructure jobs (ground crew, gate agents, etc) at hub airports saves the company money. It just hurts them in the end.
 
grnclvrs said:
Jetways have a safety feature where the jetway won't move unless the cable is parked at the top. What do you guys do, disable this?
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Like was mentioned, depends on the airport. Also, most of the ones that won't move with the cable down have a flat metal plate at the top. As long as the metal plate is flush, the bridge will still move. It doesn't know that the cord isn't hooked into the catches underneath. All it knows is the plate is making contact. In MCO, you could un-hook the power cord from one of the catches, and it was long enough to stretch across while still have the plate make contact.

I've even seen some jet bridges in cities I fly to in the CRJ that will move with the power on. Ground crews and jet bridge drives have to be careful with these. We've had a couple of CRJ's external power receptacles damaged when the jet bridge driver tried to pull back with the power still attached.
 
Minnesota_Flyer said:
Amazing what your people are willing to do when you treat your people well.
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I read in Hard Landing by Thomas Petzinger, that the short turns originally came from a desire to not get laid off. SWA originally had 4 airplanes, and had to return one because of finances. Instead of getting layed off, the ground folks came up with a way to turn the airplane in 10 minutes, in order to maintain the same flight schedule with one less airplane. If anything, it wasn't the company treating the people well, but rather the people treating the company well, thereby saving everyone's jobs.
 
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