JetBlue Early Arrival

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How does JetBlue manage to leave on time and arrive early everytime? All my flights with them so far we've departed on time and gotten to the destination at least 20 minutes early. How does an airline do this? It doesn't get any preference on traffic so how do they do it? I noticed they cruise at 41,000FT on A320s. Does this have anything to do with it?
 
It called 'over-blocking', or 'padding' of the schedules.

I remember Eagle did it several years back with their CLE flights which always seemed to be delayed. Pad the schedule a few minutes, take the usual delay, but still arrive on time.
 
Just taking a stab here, but I'd imagine that there's not nearly as much traffic up around FL410.

Another thing, though: they couldn't possibly ALWAYS fly at 41,000 feet - it wouldn't always be efficient.

Just my two cents...

If I'm wrong, someone just pounce on me here and let me know!

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Also consider this...You can only cruise at certain altitudes going certain directions for vertical serperation, so you cannot always go with the same altitude each and every flight, unless you go the same direction each flight. Here are the available altitudes for IFR cruising:

EAST (0 through 179 degree): Below FL290: Odd Altitudes, Above FL290: FL290, FL330, FL370, FL410, FL450, FL490, FL530 etc.

WEST (180 through 359 degrees): Below FL290: Even ALtitudes, Above FL290: Fl310, FL350, FL390, FL430, FL470, FL510, FL550 etc.

And yes, as noted before Airbus A320's cannot cruise above FL390.
 
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How does JetBlue manage to leave on time and arrive early everytime?

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All my flights with them so far we've departed on time

[/ QUOTE ] This will always play a big part, most other airlines don't leave the gate until at least 5 mins late

Also what airport are you flying out of/into?
 
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An A320 can't go above FL390.

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Well then both the pilot and the flight screen lied. The pilot announced a cruising altittude of 41,000FT and the flight tv map showed 41,000Ft. I was also surprised considering only the heavies usually go at this alltitude.
 
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How does JetBlue manage to leave on time and arrive early everytime?

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All my flights with them so far we've departed on time

[/ QUOTE ] This will always play a big part, most other airlines don't leave the gate until at least 5 mins late

Also what airport are you flying out of/into?

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FLL-JFK JFK-FLL
 
Was it 410 both ways? Also, as long as it can reach FL410, any aircraft can reach and operaterate normally there, they can cruise there. It's not just limited to heavies.
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I'm gonna go with Amber on this one. JetBlue has to pad their schedules, and I'm pretty sure most airlines do. DOT only counts on-time arrivals, not departures. So, if you push late, you could still be "on time." JetBlue is right next door to Southwest at MCO (little bit of heated rivalry there), so we try to show 'em up whenever we can. Last week, my gate turned two full Southwest flights in the time JetBlue took to turn one of their's. I think they didn't like us laughing at them since they turned the A320's engines straight at us.....
 
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Was it 410 both ways? Also, as long as it can reach FL410, any aircraft can reach and operaterate normally there, they can cruise there. It's not just limited to heavies.
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It was like that from FLL-JFK. There was turbulance mentioned by the captain during that period and if you looked out the window the weather was ungly.
 
I've been to FL410 in the RJ. Doesn't happen too often, we have to be real light and it's gotta be real cold up there!

ATC still follows the direction of flight rules up there also. There are many airplanes that can get up that high or even higher. The 737NGs can get up there as well as a lot of business jets. I saw a G-V up at FL430 one day!
 
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I've been to FL410 in the RJ. Doesn't happen too often, we have to be real light and it's gotta be real cold up there!

ATC still follows the direction of flight rules up there also. There are many airplanes that can get up that high or even higher. The 737NGs can get up there as well as a lot of business jets. I saw a G-V up at FL430 one day!

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Well in this case I don't think we were very light considering it was a full flight.
 
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JetBlue has to pad their schedules

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No one pads anything...

Every quarter, airlines are required to analyze the "average" block time for a specific trip. This is the time an airplane leaves the gate to the time the airplane arrives at the gate. In the summer and winter the "block" times change as the jetstream's relative velocity changes.

This is a requirement by the FAA.

With Jetblue et all striving for max aircraft utilization, padding of the schedule would be counterproductive. Block times are figured with anticipated taxi time in and out. When you can get out and not wait for takeoff, you can very easily arrive early.
 
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An A320 can't go above FL390.

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Well then both the pilot and the flight screen lied. The pilot announced a cruising altittude of 41,000FT and the flight tv map showed 41,000Ft. I was also surprised considering only the heavies usually go at this alltitude.

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It's not possible. Even when light the A320 can only make FL370, you don't see 390 in revenue service.
 
Actually, most airlines pad their schedules because of average taxi-in and taxi-out times. Some flight plans have 8 mins of taxi time, others have up to 35 mins of taxi time depending on the airport, time of day, and season.

If an airline listed it's flight time and posted that as their schedule, there's be no airline on time.

Plus, any airline that doesn't use automatic time reporting (I don't know if they do or not) runs on time. Similar to when Shuttle by United went head to head against SWA. Shuttle pulled out the automatic times reporting and automagically ended up an 'on time' operation.
 
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Plus, any airline that doesn't use automatic time reporting (I don't know if they do or not) runs on time. Similar to when Shuttle by United went head to head against SWA. Shuttle pulled out the automatic times reporting and automagically ended up an 'on time' operation.

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Doug, what exactly is the automatic time reporting? Care to explain a bit??
 
FL410 and 41,000 ft ASL aren't the same altittude depending a barometric pressure, but I don't think it's possible to for FL390 and 41,000 ft ASL to be the same...
 
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Actually, most airlines pad their schedules because of average taxi-in and taxi-out times

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I wouldn't call adding time for taxi in and out "padding" of ones schedule. Like I said, they take an average time for the past quarter for each flight. If the flight leaves during a push, then obviously taxi out might be built in as 30 minutes, where on a different flight it might be 7 minutes.

It's all averages.
 
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