Cutting Fares Was One Thing; Playing With The Clock Is Something Altogether Different

Aero-News has devoted plenty of bandwidth to Delta Airline's "Simplefare" plan -- a cap on even last-minute fares that means no coach passenger will ever pay more than $499 for a domestic round-trip ticket. But that's only part of the Atlanta-based airline's plan to climb out of a swimming pool full of red ink. The other shoe is about to drop at the end of the month. Delta calls it, "Operation Clockwork."

As ANN explained last fall, Delta is reworking its hub operations at Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, eliminating rush-hours and leveling the number of departing and arriving flights throughout the day. That means about 65 flights an hour, according to the airline.

In all, "Operation Clockwork" will affect about half of Delta's Atlanta flights and is considered by many in the industry to the biggest operational revision in the history of aviation, according to the Atlanta Business Journal. It will increase the number daily flight operations at Hartsfield to 1,051 (up from the current 970) and, if Delta's gamble pays off, go a long way toward easing the financial pressure bearing down on the airline.

The motive behind "Operation Clockwork" is exceedingly simple: The longer a multi-million dollar aircraft sits on the ground during turnaround operations, the less it's doing what it was built to do -- fly. The less it flies, the less revenue it makes. So Delta is shortening the turnaround time at Hartsfield from as many as 70-minutes to just 50. It's not a new concept. The Business Journal reports Delta quietly tested the concept at Raleigh-Durham, NC, finding that MD-88s could be turned around in as little as 38-minutes.

"We freed up an entire plane in Raleigh just from that," Rich Cordell, senior vice president of airport customer service for Delta, told the Business Journal.

Of course, passengers are part of the equation as well. To that end, they can expect quite a lot of extra help from cabin and ground crew members as they try to fit that big bag into an already crowded little overhead bin. And if they're late -- well, Delta is moving to a "departure zero" scenario that means the doors will be shut and dogged five minutes before departure -- no matter who's running through the terminal or how close they are to the gate.

"This is making Atlanta the deadliest competitive hub in the country," Lucio Petroccione Jr., director of operations strategy and planning at Delta, told the Atlanta business publication.

And that's just what has aviation industry watchers and Delta investors on the edge of their seats.

"This is a drastic and radical change that is risky, and it's all happening at once. But this is a very risky time for the whole industry, and they have to do something big if they want to survive," said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, MA, in an interview with the Business Journal.

Others say it's a risk because, more than anything else, flattening the operational tempo at Hartsfield is just one part of Delta's overall financial equation.

"Fuel prices could shoot even higher (than the current $45 a barrel price), the competition could squeeze you and you're dependent on labor to keep customers happy," Chaison said.

But the bottom line, says Delta, is the more you fly, the more money you make. "Operation Clockwork," in theory, will be like adding 19 new flights at Hartsfield. If it works, that could be real money.

FMI: www.delta.com