This is more of a small change than a big one, but let’s say that Delta flies from Buffalo to Tampa via Atlanta and it takes 4h32m. Look at it through the eyes of the reservation system. There are a few other reasons I can think of that would make this worth doing. So at a large airline like Delta, when the schedule firms up, they might find that tweaks of a minute or two on other routes can help. Some routes could be cut, frequencies could change, etc. There might be some new routes added since the schedule was first put out there. Major tweaks happen along the way, but the big ones are usually done when you’re a few months out. Often, that won’t be the final expected schedule. That sounds really nebulous, so let me try to fill in the blanks.Ī schedule is put out there nearly a year in advance. Little tweaks of a minute or two can make a difference. In other words, when Delta first puts the schedule out there, it’s not perfectly timed to fit into the entire system. As your reader noted, these are minor, a minute here and there. when the schedule is first published, it’s not operationally sequenced, so small adjustments are made on certain routes – basically massaging the departure and arrival times slightly for the best operational efficiency and connectivity. I went to Delta for the official response and was told this: You think your flights are all set and then you get a schedule change notice saying that the arrival time has moved by a minute or two. This happens on all airlines, but I’ve certainly noticed it happening more frequently on Delta than others. Why would Delta make such small changes to the flights? I’m a private pilot and come from a family of pilots, so I’m familiar with airspeed versus ground speed, but there’s no way they can predict the weather nearly two months out and I know about flying at maximum economical speed as opposed to maximum possible speed, so I’m wondering if the rising fuel prices have caused them to adjust their speeds a bit to save fuel. For example, my departure from Buffalo was changed from 4:30 to 4:27 (or it might have been the other way around). The departure and arrival times were changed by 1-3 minutes, for the most part making the flights a bit longer. I booked my tickets last week and got an interesting email from the online travel service this week that my return flights had been changed by the airline. This gave me the chance to reach out there and see if I could get any more detail. This is a great question, because I’ve wondered it myself for quite awhile.
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