Workponies in the sky - a day in the life of an A320
- flychickenflyyy
- Nov 6, 2019
- 5 min read
Who doesn’t stand in awe in front of a B777 or a A380? These huge wide-body planes are awesome to look at – and great to fly on. They shuttle hundreds of passengers around the world to the most exotic places on a daily basis. That’s why I like to refer to them as the workhorses of the sky.
However, on a daily basis, the vast majority of departing planes shuttle passengers around on short-haul flights, say London to Frankfurt. Those routes are monopolized by the little brothers of this wide-body giants: think of the narrow-body single-aisle Boeing 737 or its counterpart from Airbus, the A320. With all the commotion going on around the 737 and its max variant, we’ll focus this article around the less controversial A320 family.
There are more than 7000 A320 and variants in operation today, 4 to 5 times more than say a B777. And while the A320 has less seats than a B777, the fact that they are mostly used for short-haul flights, hence performing multiple flights a day, means that they account for the vast majority of passengers transported worldwide on a daily basis. Hence, I like to refer to those narrow-body aircraft as the “workponies” of the sky, shuttling passengers around across nearby countries. Or is that a wrong statement? Well, let’s check what the data says. We tracked 9 members of the A320 family for a week and here's what we found on how they are being used.
To look into different A320 operating models, we tracked down planes at some of the biggest operators of the 320 worldwide: EasyJet, American Airlines and AirAsia. We added some airlines with some specifically interesting routes to that, such as JetStar, S7, Alaska airlines and the now bankrupted WOW air. And finally, we added 2 smaller players in the industry to our analysis who can be referred to as the typical old-school single-hub airlines: Brussels Airlines and MAI, flying out of Brussels and Yangon respectively.
We then tracked the airplane’s activities over a week. And we found some interesting trends:
1. First of all, the A320s are incredibly versatile. They are used for both 1-hour commuter flights as well as for long-haul trips across continents. The AirAsia A320 we tracked for instance was kept on a tight leash from its Bangkok DMK airport hub flying 1h flights around the region, with occasional splurs bringing the aircraft a 3 or 4-hour flight away from home on trips to China or India. The Russian-based S7 airline pushes its A320 neo much further away from home, with the plane reaching the western-border of Europe by flying to Tenerife and traveling far east just a couple of days later to say Beijing or the earlier mentioned Bangkok area in the East, as such literally showing up across the whole Eurasian contintent and more! To do so, the plane often engages in trips of 7h of travel or more! Almost enough to cross the Atlantic in this narrow-body plane.
Which brings us to WOW air, who wanted to revolutionize cross-Atlantic travel by having people connect through Reykjavik, Iceland. While the model proved not to be profitable (they recently went bankrupt), WOW air did build quite an impressive network across both sides of the Atlantic, using an A321 which we tracked from Boston, US to Amsterdam, Holland and to Tenerife (yes, here’s Tenerife again!).
In summary, these planes can cater for different airline strategies. In our example, Airasia uses their A320 to do multiple trips a day, focusing on maximizing the number of paying customer per day. Their plane we tracked had an average of 5.4 departures a day! S7 focuses on the long-haul trips, with less than 3 departures a day on average, but with an average flight time of close to 6 hours per trip! So it will always be possible to use the fleet of aircraft for different purposes, whilst also keeping re-seller options on the table.
2. Besides versatility, there’s another item that plays a role in the operations of the A320, namely geography. European and US airports tend to be much more regulated than say Asian or Middle Eastern airports when it comes to noise pollution. Asian and Middle Eastern airports often operate 24/7, making it easier for airlines to keep their planes in the air most of the time. Airlines operating mainly from European or US airports tend to have large blocks of “unused” plane time, mostly between 11PM and 6 AM. Planes would then stand idle.
The plane we tracked from AirAsia on the other hand is being used almost non-stop, with frequent departures and landing times at say 3 or 4 AM in the morning. Other low-cost carriers such as WOW air and S7 counter these restricted night blocks by having planes leave on a 6h trip at like 11.30 PM, as such having the plane in the air at night instead of it standing idle. The EasyJet / Alaska Airlines / Brussels Airlines and WOW plane we tracked did not have any departures between 11PM and 6AM and accumulated a lot of idle time overnight.
3. A third important item in how airlines operate their planes is their seating plan. Most of us are familiar with how low-budget airlines use the A320 workponies. They constitute of the traditional 3+3 seating layout where all the seats are identical. On more reputed airlines, business-class passengers will get the same econonmy seat, but will have an empty seat in the middle in line with their status… and their ticket price.
But there are also airlines that really go all the way, and have full-blown long-haul business-class seats in their A320 airplane (think full-bed mode). Think about middle-eastern airlines the like of Qatar airways, but Gulf air, but also European airlines such as Finnair have made the investment to make flying those workponies a more pleasurable experience, mainly by brining the wide-body aircraft experience to the tiny A320.
Well, I hope this shed some light on the benefits on the workponies of the sky, and why they are such a popular addition to the fleet of most airlines in the world.
Here's a surprise egg quest(ion) from our chickens: As the A320s are so versatile, are they also being used on trans-atlantic flights?
Well, the answer is yes… well no… well actually yes… well, rather no… yes… no. Let’s say it is a difficult question. Before going belly-up, WOW air used to transit passengers from Europe to the US by transiting them through Iceland, but I don’t think that counts. And the newer Long Range versions of the A320 and the B737 family will definitely lead to some operators using these planes across the atlantic in the near future.
But the only real trans-atlantic flight in existence today that I am aware of is British Airways flight 01. BA flies a A318 daily between the airport in LCY (London) and JFK in New York. On the way there, the plane will stop in Shannon SNN Ireland for a refuel during which passengers can clear US customs on European soil. It then flies straight to JFK and lands as a domestic flight (saving passengers loads of time to enter the US, as they cleared customs already). The A318 then flies straight back from JFK to LCY. So are A320s being used for transatlantic travel? Well, yes… no… yes… no… What do you think? Let me know in the comments’ section!
Meanwhile, Fly Chicken Fly!
Comments