RFP Idea.
Best non-717 RFP order? MD-88s.
What if, we took over the 4th floor, and had the goals of:
- mainline scope recapture,
- capacity neutral and
- frequency neutral.
I think you get that if you go back to point-to-point-to-hub flying.
You could use 1 88 to offer 74ish seats to two cities on 1 plane, using 1 gate and 1 "slot".
Looking at GSO and GSP
to ATL, you've got 10 flights each or 20 flights total and 1769 seats a day in one direction between those two cities and ATL.
GSP has 777 and GSP and 992 to GSO. Flights are on a mix of CRJ200s, 700s and 900s and DC95s and 88s.
Options:
- Do all MD88 direct flights with the same frequencies gives you'd 1200 more seats in the market then you want, not an option.
- You could reduce frequency out of GSP to 5 and GSO to 7 to keep seat inventory the same, but that's a frequency reduction.
- OR, fly GSO-GSP-ATL on an 88.
If you did that 10 times a day you'd come up a little short in seat inventory so offer 8 GSO-GSP-ATL flights and 2 direct flights from each city and you are frequency and capacity neutral and all mainline.
A 717, btw, on direct flights would result in only a minor reduction in frequency for the same capacity.