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.