The Heart of Airline Travel

?We do a lot to save time. Think of it: we don’t fly (commercial) because we love the food or the seats or the security. We fly because it is the fastest way to get somewhere. Sitting in an uncomfortable seat for hours is just part of the price we will pay just to quickly get where we are going. Most airline travelers would happily choose another – any other – means of transport if it was faster. If we could get there faster by pogo stick, then we would.

But of course, pogo sticks, despite their quixotic qualities, are not the quickest way to cross the Atlantic.

That is on the consumer side. Consumers pay to save time. It is that simple. The more money a person has, the more willing they are to expend money in order to gain more time. As we use up what time we have, the more we realize that time is the enabler for everything else.

On the business side, time has a more starkly economic value. Empty hotel rooms cannot make money. Idle manufacturing machines cannot make things. It is a basic fact that, whatever we do: lost time = lost opportunity = lost money. And the more time is worth to a business, then the more that business should be trying to make the most of it.

The airline industry dovetails these two key elements: Passengers want to save time. And airlines recognize that they cannot make money if they don’t fly. Even better, the more they do fly, the more money can be made. It is a nicely virtuous circle: the more airlines can save time in their own operations, the more time savings are delivered to customers! Because saving time is, as have pointed out, the only reason commercial passenger aviation exists in the first place.

But herein lies the rub: jet-engined aircraft are expensive to fly. So there are a number of tradeoffs between flying speed and fuel and operational and other costs that have basically locked in the same optimal cruising speeds for commercial jets from the dawn of the commercial jet age with the 707 to the present day state-of-the-art A220s and A350s. Given all of those costs, there turned out to be no net competitive advantage to be had by flying significantly faster (as Concorde and Sonicruiser found). ?

In a nutshell, every commercial jet flies at about the same speed.

Ah! But there is more to a journey than sitting on an airplane in flight. Passengers are keenly aware of time spent sitting on the airplane on the ground. And this is an area where not all airlines are the same. From touchdown to takeoff, a typical AirAsia or Ryanair flight spends a little more than? 60 minutes, an hour, on the ground. But those same narrowbody aircraft being flown by United and Delta and American average 100+ minutes on the ground between flights!

And it matters. Operating margin (which does not take into account Loyalty Revenues from credit card points), is the basic economics of flying passengers. And we found something very interesting, just using public sourced data: the single biggest contribution to operating margin is NOT the age of the fleet or the stylishness of the crew uniforms or whether the airline charges extra for bags or seats. Instead, airline operating margin tracks more closely to ground time between flights than to any other single factor!

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When you think about it, this should not be surprising. Utilization has long been the secret sauce for Low Cost Carriers like Southwest (who invented the Ten Minute Turn ), and further optimized by Indigo and Ryanair and others around the globe. (note that the video notwithstanding, the famous Ten Minute Turn was always more of an aspirational goal than a regular occurrence).

These carriers brag about time savings to their customers (who are purchasing that specific service, after all). They put it on their websites .

They lock those faster operations into their schedules, because they have found a way to make fewer aircraft do the work of more aircraft! Those time savings translate into lower ownership costs per passenger-mile, lower operational costs per passenger-mile (including fuel, crew, etc.). And, in that virtuous circle, it also leads to more passenger revenue as well, because passengers will pay extra to avoid a carrier who is known to be frequently delayed (On-Time Performance (OTP) is a key marketing metric).

According to TravelPulse :

On-Time Performance (OTP) is the foremost reason that 36 percent of all travelers surveyed cited for their continued loyalty to any given airline. Baby Boomers (25 percent) cite OTP as their primary motive for remaining loyal to a brand, on par with the value they place upon frequent-flyer program status and rewards.

Gen Z’s loyalty is the most influenced by OTP, and the reason that 63 percent of them reported remaining loyal to their preferred airline. Compare that to 52 percent of Millennials, 35 percent of Gen X and 25 percent of Baby Boomers who said the same.

We also know that passengers pay more to avoid connecting flights, when a nonstop can be had. Because ultimately an airline like Ryanair does not succeed on the basis of its warm-and-fuzzy customer service. It succeeds because, in the words of Michael O’Leary, “Air transport is just a glorified bus operation.” ?

The less time the bus sits at the depot, the more money it can make. Which is why the Low Cost Carriers Ryanair, easyjet and Wizz, who are all essentially new arrivals, are, by passengers carried, three of the four biggest airlines in Europe.

But despite all of this, the trend lines are going in reverse. Southwest, famous for its “ten minute turnaround” goal of yore, now averages 55 minutes at the gate, over 70 minutes on the ground. And they are hardly alone.

Everything seems to conspire to make ground times longer - ever-busier airports lead to unprecedented congestion which in turn leads to delays which cascade through the day.? There is a reason why the worst part of air travel is sitting on the airplane - on the ground.

Flight times, by comparison, are largely unaffected. It is on the ground where misery multiplies.?

As BCG puts it:

Sometimes it pays to sweat the small stuff. Take on-time performance (OTP). In the airline business, one late aircraft early in the morning can lead to more than 70 delayed planes later in the day. Delay minutes double, on average, by end of day, one reason US domestic flights are about 80% on time at 6:00 a.m. and only about 50% on time at 6:00 p.m. At some highly congested airports in Europe, OTP falls below 30% by end of day. Shaving one minute off the time each aircraft is on the ground between flights can save $5 million to $10 million a year in freed aircraft time and hidden costs across the operation.

Enter WheelTug. We will deliver time savings to airlines and their customers of 7-20 minutes every flight. And do it while reducing congestion, fuel burn, emissions and accidents.

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On top of that, WheelTug helps a significant, daily airline challenge. You have probable noticed that the first flight of the day is quite likely to be punctual – but that the last flight of the day is much more likely to be late. This is because delays add up through the flying day… one late connection leads to more late connections, delay cascading through the fleet and airports as the day goes on.

There are consequences to these cascaded delays. Consider, for example, the cost impacts from a late arrival at the end of the day. Crews are limited in the active time that they can operate, and too much delay leads to a “time out” that grounds the crew. This is especially problematic at a minor airport, an outstation, because replacement crews are not merely expensive: they may not be available at all. To prevent this the airlines must position “fresh crew” on outstations just for the last day flight back to home base. That is a significant cost to the airline – which means it ultimately becomes yet another cost tacked onto the ticket price.

So WheelTug provides a very useful tool for reducing delays ("Delay Avoidance") and even for “catching up,” ("Delay Recovery") as airlines speed up the time on the ground in order to reduce delays and all the knock-on effects that come from it.

This is an industry that lives on the margin. The average profit per ticket in 2023 was about $2. So what can 7, 10, or 20 minutes mean for airlines – or passengers?

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Let’s talk!

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